In Class Essay about 12 Years A Slave and Glory.

It is possible to analytical skills and explore real events, circumstances, and attitudes just by watching movies in a critical way, and doing some research. In both 12 Years a Slave and Glory I heard about historical events that I never had heard of before, such as the 54th Regiment and Solomon Northup and without watching those movies, I would have never heard about them before either. These movies along with my post research where I looked into the lives of Samuel Bass the man from Canada who wrote to Mr.Northup's friends in the North and Mr.Shaw from Glory the young leader of the 54th Regiment. 

              Through the films and the Research I saw the real events, circumstances, and attitudes of these characters. I saw how Shaw's attitude to his men changed, at first he was hesitant to train them as well as leave his old company behind as Civilwar.org told me, he knew he would see action in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry and no action in the 54th Regiment, as well as only taking the job in the 54th to make his mom less worried about him. At the end of it, Shaw respected his men making sure after getting $3 less than the white soldiers that they receive the full $13 dollars like any other soldier even refusing his pay until they all got the full amount. 

                We also get an accurate portrayal from both films on the attitudes of how slaves and free black's act towards one another. In Glory it's very hostile, The slaves think the free black's are somewhat of sellouts for living freely with the white people as well as thinking they are delusional for trying to act white since they are black. While the free blacks think that the slaves are stupid for being slaves/caught. In 12 Years A Slave it's different though, When Solomon is still free and living in New York, his family goes shopping at a grocery and a Servant of a white man walks in to, he is obviously confused why Solomon is allowed to go in and talk to the shop owner like friends and wishes he was able to as well and Solomon the freed person in this situation looks away, he pities the man but knows there isn't anything he can do about it, this situation replays itself later on when Solomon is freed, Patsy looks on longing hoping that she too can be free and Solomon now free again can only pity her as the carriage drives away.     

The Films both only have limited time to tell their stories so of course a few small details get omitted, such as Solomon having 3 kids instead of 2 or Solomon getting into 2 incidents with his first Master's Overseer instead of 1. But as a whole the movies both get deep into it's source material (the book and letters) and have very little fictional elements to it. 12 Years a Slave gives us a lot of insight into what Slavery was like towards the end of the Comprise era as well as the Pre-Civil war era as well. It's a harrowing look from being set-up by Slave traders to showing what Plantation life was like. While Glory gives great examples of the Civil war and truly shows how hectic battles in the civil war were with the drumming, with the gunfire as well as with the standing in one big line shooting at each other at such a close range that you were sure to get killed or injured. 

Citations:

Time:Historical accuracy of 12 Years A Slave: I used this source to tell about the 12 Years A Slave details that were omitted.

NYT's 10/17/13 12 Years a Slave review

Genealogy/History of Samuel Bass

Glory:Historical accuracy

NYT's 12/14/89 Glory Review:     

Biography of Shaw: I used this source to talk about how Shaw was not looking forward to leading the 54th at first.

Illustration of Solomon reuniting with his family

Illustration of what a slave auction would look like.

 

Edwin Epp's house, Solomon's 2nd Master's home.

Illustration of Solomon.

Photo of the Real Col.Robert Shaw