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.