Life Writing And Ethical Expression Of Twelve Years A Slave

Solomon Northup, a common African American, a violinist, a cultivated civilian,was abducted and forced to be a slave for twelve years, and after being rescued, he wrote down the documentary narration Twelve Years a Slave on slavery and began to lecture around for abolition movement. The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe had attracted extensive attention after being published in 1852 and she was considered as the woman to be the catalyst and trigger to the fierce contradictions between the southern and northern American states. Nevertheless, for the fictitious features among the scenes, the novel was questioned by the readers who supported slavery. A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published by Stowe thereafter in1853 and with real material evidence, she proved that the real society was even crueler than the depiction in the book, and among which she cited Solomon Northup’s personal experience and his letters for help. Hence it can be said that before the publication of Twelve Years a Slave, Northup had been known among some readers and his book was thus deemed as the supplement to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. However, the legacy left by him was not merely the book. In order to commemorate the sufferings of Northup and the slaves of African Americans, it’s then announced in Saratoga Springs that July 24 th is Solomon Northup’s Day.This thesis plays back the ethical environment of "being sold to be a slave" from the study perspective of ethical literary criticism. Via the intensive reading of the text Twelve Years a Slave and along main ethical line of "going back home", the "ethical complex" in this novel will be deconstructed successively in this thesis, and naturally the ethical appeal would also be unmasked accordingly.To elaborate this masterpiece, the thesis consists of five parts as follows:The first chapter is the introduction part. This chapter consists of the retrospection on the life history of Solomon Northup, the novel Twelve Years a Slave as well as the brief introduction of the present status of literary ethical criticism and the domestic and foreign researches on the novel. And it will also indicate that the rich ethical connotations in the novel Twelve Years a Slave elaborated from the perspective of ethical literary criticism is of salient study significance.In pursuit of "truth", the second chapter restores the temporal ethical environment and exposes the miserable conditions of the black slaves through reproducing a series of scenes such as ethical values on secular, religion and survival.To make a thorough inquiry into the individual and social reasons why Northup is sold to be slave and thereafter trapped in the slavery shackles, and however, there is no other way but to go back to the temporal ethical scene and make an impartial and rational judgment from moral aspects and objective historical context as well asliterary context.From the choice of "goodness", the third chapter re-constructs the ethical identity for Northup. Through the relationships among nature, human and society, it deepens the analysis on process of how Northup loses original self-identity and how the incurable physical and spiritual trauma emerge during slavery life for twelve years.In aspiring for "beauty", the fourth chapter narrates the twelve years of life in purgatory as well as how Northup’s ethical consciousness sustains the hope alive and spurs him to re-gain the physical freedom, get traumas healed unremittingly, surmount them and re-obtain the spiritual freedom and renascence eventually.The last chapter comes to the conclusion that the documentary novel written by Northup is not only a vivid picture of blacks being enslaved direly, but also a great contribution to the African American Black Literature and tremendous progress of the narration of Black Literature. It can be said that the analysis of this text from the perspective of ethical literary criticism provides completely new insights to the interpretation of this documentary novel about slavery. The natures, whether of the "daily-life writing" in written forms or the "anti-slavery lectures" in oral forms, are Solomon’s narrations and profound expressions of his life experience, driven by ethical consciousness. In this unique literary pattern of life writing, Solomon unveils the relentless slavery and vicious hierarchical orders to masses. On behalf of the entire black race, he initiates the ethical indictment as a herald, chants the hymns for blacks,vents anti-slavery ethical appeal and then provides impetus to the advancement of abolition movement.