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This paper examines violence and silence in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, which is based on Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave Narrative of Solomon Northup. McQueen’s film presents slavery as the background for violence and silence. Violence and silence are the key words that signify 12 Years as a legitimate portrayal of slavery. Northup is a freeborn black man, but he is tricked by two white men and sold to a slave trader. He suffers from unrelenting violence for insisting upon his free status and beating a white overseer, Tibeats. Patsey, Edwin Epps’s female slave suffers from ruthless violence. As the object of Epps’s lust, she is brutally beaten for seeking soap to clean herself. She is also victim to the jealous rages of Mistress Epps who lashes out at her without direct reason. Northup is indifferent to the plight of the women and is silent although he sees Patsey beaten. He learns the survival rule of silence after witnessing slavery’s oppression and ruthless beatings. His silence continues until freedom is opportune. Patsey is forced to accept her slave status as a female slave under the institution of slavery. In spite of a severe whipping, Patsey is usually silenced. McQueen repeatedly dramatizes and emphasizes violence and silence through the depravity of slavery and expands upon the violence to present the realities about slavery to viewers of his film, 12 Years a Slave.