The Birth of Nation (2016) is a movie about the slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Southampton County. Nat Turner is an enslaved Baptist preacher who lives on a Virginia plantation owned by Samuel Turner. With the rumors of uprising in the air, Nate is convinced by Samuel to sermonize other slaves. As Nate witnesses the horrific treatment of his fellow man, he realizes that he can no longer just stand by and preach. In this essay, I will be talking about the variance within slavery depicted in the movie.
Nat Turner is a slave of Samuel Turner, who is a wealthy man in Virginia. He had a lot of slaves under him. Samuel Turner usually treated his slaves in all fairness. The slaves had a proper place to live and had specific duties assigned to them. Moreover, Nat was helped by Samuel Turner’s family to learn to read and …show more content…
Nat was then taken aback by seeing how horribly other slaves were treated. Nat was seen picking the cotton and working freely in Samuel Turner’s field. But in other scenes we can see how other slaves were beaten to work efficiently. This shows us the variance in slavery. Moreover, the ill treatment of slave catchers towards slaves is blatantly shown in the movie. This is shown in a scene where the wife of Nat Turner is raped by slave catchers. Samuel Turner was basically respectful towards his slave. But this changes when there was a huge party thrown in Samuel Turners home. Samuel Turner’s guest insists on having sex with one of the slaves. This shows how the other masters were only thinking of having sex with the slaves.
In summation, we can see that there were variances in slavery that was depicted in the movie. Samuel Turner and his family were treated like they were one of the family members. But other slaves were treated terribly as shown in the movie. They were chained and beaten by their masters. Moreover, they were kept as captives while Samuel Turners slaves were left open in