In the end when they reunite, neither party rush to each other overcome with happiness. They stand there like complete strangers. His kids know him, so does his wife and they stand still bewildered, and bewildering the audience watching it. Then he explains why he has grey hair and they slowly inch towards each other. WTH?
shareBecause they almost felt like strangers. He was gone for 12 years! He went through a lot (we see this). His family went through a lot (losing him, not knowing what happened to him, children grew up, one is married with a child). Now, he's just thrown back into the mix. I'm sure it it was so emotional and overwhelming they weren't sure just how to act.
sharePersonally, I thought his new son-in-law might have been his wife's new husband - that she'd given up hope, remarried, AND had another child. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.
It's possible Solomon felt responsible for "abandoning" them (he said he was sorry) and wasn't sure if, somehow, they might have felt that way, too.
Personally, I thought his new son-in-law might have been his wife's new husband - that she'd given up hope, remarried, AND had another child. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.
It's just like TT13181 said----his family had probably thought he'd either abandoned them,or that he'd been killed, or any number of things. And they were almost complete strangers to one another, after him having been gone for so long. Then there's the fact that a part of him as a person had been fundamentally destroyed by his ordeal, and things were taken from his that he could never get back--the lost years without his family; his having to accept the very real possibility that he would never get off the plantation and would die a slave,and the very long-lasting psychological damage he probably had as a result of going through and surviving what he went through. I found that ending very poignant and somewhat sad,even though he was free----because he'd lost so much over those 12 years as a slave.
The ending is even more poignant,because IRL, Solomon Northup seemed to have vanished completely off the face of the earth, four years after his book was published. What his eventual fate was, no one knows.