Narrativization of Solomon Northup’s Journey from Bondage to Freedom inTwelve Years a Slave

Abstract

This research explores the conventions of slave narrative with the trope of Solomon Northup’s journey of from bondage to freedom within the context of Slavery in the Antebellum American South in Twelve Years a Slave. Drawing upon the theories of slave narratives, especially William Andrew, the research primarily focuses on analyzing how the effects of slavery are narrativized following the then-popular conventions of brutalities in writing personal narratives, mostly by the freed slaves as a way of voicing against the brutal institution of slavery. This paper begins with the examination of narrative conventions like starting from information of the narrator’s birth and examines number of conventions that follow in Northup’s narrative could be justified as a slave narrative.