Beloved & 12 Years A Slave

Beloved and Twelve Years a Slave share the common theme of slavery and the overwhelming fear of being recaptured. The main characters in Beloved and Twelve Years a Slave, Sethe and Solomon Northup, respectively, come in to slavery very differently. Sethe is born in to slavery and knows little else. In contrast, Solomon is a free, educated black man who lives in the north until he is abducted and sold in to slavery. This difference leads to different mentalities between the two characters. Solomon struggles to adapt to life as a slave where as Sethe struggles to accept her freedom. Sethe believes that slavery is a circle in that there is no escaping slavery because a former slave or any African-American at this time may be taken/recaptured. This mentality ruins Sethe's freedom. Instead of focusing on what she could make of her future, she stays hung up on her past. Beloved's physical reappearance only worsens this. In his article "Slavery and Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Beloved", Terry Paul Caesar suggests that Sethe is a slave to motherhood, and more specifically, Beloved. This reinforces my point that Sethe will never fully escape slavery. Beloved represents the past to Sethe and as Sethe begins to grow closer to Beloved, she begins to wither away, both physically and mentally, a decline that is commonly seen in those subjected to slavery.

Another difference lies in how the characters view their past. Where holding on to the past limits Sethe's future it is what saves Solomon. Solomon holds on to his past while he is subject to slavery and it ultimately provides a way out when he is able, through a carpenter named Bass, to send a letter to his friends in the North who come to rescue him. Despite the differences between Sethe and Solomon's journey, they both experience a full range of slavery. When Sethe arrives at Sweet Home it is fairly humane. However this changes when schoolteacher becomes the master. Schoolteacher's cruelty is what drives Sethe and the others to plan an escape. Solomon begins his experience with slavery with a brutal slave trader who aggressively beats him. He is sold to a kind master, William Ford, where he is able to devise a plan for transporting lumber that ultimately earns Ford's respect. Unfortunately he is sold to Tibeats and then to Epps, two very cruel masters.

Family is another commonality between Beloved and Twelve Years a Slave. In Beloved the yearn for a sense of family is felt by many of the characters. Baby Suggs lost her family, Paul D envied the families he met along his wanderings, and the novel centers around Sethe's desire to reunite her family. Sethe never reunites with her original family but she is able to carefully build a family with Paul D. In Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon's family is one of the things that helps him persevere through the cruelty of slavery. He too yearns for a reunion and he is able to have this.