88 pages • 2 hours read
Solomon NorthupA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
As reaffirmed in David Wilson’s preface and throughout the book, Northup takes great care to present his words as absolute truth. He not only aims to speak the truth, but he presents the book as a truthful performance that will be accepted and appraised as such by his white audiences. Even within this rhetorical tailoring to white audiences, however, Northup acknowledges the fact that he is pandering and that such pandering is necessary for white readers to believe him.
Evaluate and discuss the concept of “truth” throughout Twelve Years a Slave. Use these questions to help in formulating a response.
Teaching Suggestion: Northup also offers several illustrative examples of truth-telling complexities in the book: situations wherein he is forced to lie or stretch his own definitions of truth in order to survive, thus appeasing the white men who control every element of his environment.