Twelve Years a Slave

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Twelve Years a Slave opens with an excerpt from William Cowper’s 1785 blank verse “The Task.”

• Why do you think Northup chose these particular words for his epigraph? (topic sentence)
• How does this epigraph support the abolitionist aims and thematic interests of Twelve Years a Slave? Perform a line-by-line analysis of the verse.
• In your concluding sentences, explain how Cowper’s verse relates to Northup’s aim of using truth to disrupt and dismantle Systems of Power, Control, and Punishment that revolve around Slavery.

2. Throughout Twelve Years a Slave, Northup challenges a common myth among anti-abolitionists in the 1850s that enslaved people were passive and content in their roles, and that life was actually harder for free Black citizens in the North.

• What are at least three different ways in the text that Northup demonstrates this misconception to be patently untrue? (topic sentence)
• What are the different ways Northup demonstrates the strength, resilience, and resistance of his fellow Black captives?
• In your conclusion, describe how Northup’s upending of this misconception helped contribute to revealing the true nature of The Social Construction of Slavery.

3. Twelve Years a Slave includes several intricate descriptions of day-to-day life and systems of production on different plantations.

• How does Northup’s memoir use these descriptions to illustrate the social and economic construction of slavery? (topic sentence)
• Analyze two to three of Northup’s descriptions illustrating the economic construction of slavery. What message does he send with these descriptions?
• In your conclusion, explain how Northup’s economic explanation of plantation life helped readers uncover The Social Construction of Slavery, and how profits drove the desire to maintain the current Systems of Power, Control, and Punishment.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Examine two to three rhetorical strategies Northup uses throughout Twelve Years a Slave to prove—and illustrate—that his narrative is truthful. How is a Black man’s sense of truth complicated in a world governed and controlled by Systems of Power, Control, and Punishment that revolve around white laws?

2. Why is Northup so attentive to the hardships of enslaved women? How did he use the examples of Eliza and Patsey and examples of the Subjugation of Women and Families to further advance the abolitionist cause?

3. Summarize the different roles, perspectives, and experiences of Ford, Tibeats, Tanner, Epps, Armsby, and Bass. Why does Northup devote such careful attention to social and class dynamics among white people? How do these individuals help uphold the Systems of Power, Control, and Punishment in antebellum America?