12 Years a Slave · written by John Ridley and Steve McQueen · 2013

Mistress Epps sends Solomon to buy household goods, notices him reading the list, and warns him that learning to read will bring a hundred lashes.

Scene 135 of 211 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Mistress Epps
Solomon

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:25 into a 2:22 film

The story so farBefore scene 135

After being kidnapped from New York and sold into slavery, Solomon Northup uses his skills and carefully placed trust to survive and seek a way back to his family.

Scenes 1–29
Solomon lives freely in Saratoga as a husband, father, worker, and musician.
Scenes 30–65
Kidnapped and held under the imposed name Platt, Solomon must preserve his life and identity.
Scenes 66–123
He enters plantation life under Ford, passes through Tibeats’s violence and the near-lynching, and is transferred to Epps.
Scene 124
Solomon is transferred to Epps’s plantation and placed among Patsey and the enslaved workers, opening the harsher final plantation phase.
Just before
Scene 132
The exhausted slaves dance for Epps; his wife throws a carafe at Patsey and demands she be sold, but Epps refuses and orders the dance to continue as Patsey is dragged out bleeding.
Scene 133
The Great House horn sounds at sunrise, beginning another day of labor.
Scene 134
The enslaved workers pick cotton and sing a spiritual in the field.
Scene 135
This scene

135EXT. MASTER EPPS'S PLANTATION/GREAT HOUSE - LATER

As the slaves make their way in from the field, the Mistress calls to Solomon. SHE HAS A PIECE OF PAPER IN HAND.

MISTRESS EPPS

Platt...

SOLOMON

Yes, Mistress.

MISTRESS EPPS

Can you find your way to

Bartholomew's?

SOLOMON

I can, ma'am.

Handing Solomon a sheet of paper.

MISTRESS EPPS

This is a list of goods and

sundries. You will take it to be

filled and return immediately.

Tell Bartholomew to add it to our

debt.

SOLOMON

I will, Mistress.

Solomon looks at the list. In a careless moment, Solomon reads quietly from it. He catches himself, but not before the Mistress notes his action. With high inquisitiveness:

MISTRESS EPPS

Where yah from, Platt?

SOLOMON

I have told you.

MISTRESS EPPS

Tell me again.

SOLOMON

Washington.

MISTRESS EPPS

Who were yah Master?

SOLOMON

Master name of Freeman.

MISTRESS EPPS

Was he a learned man?

SOLOMON

I suppose so.

MISTRESS EPPS

He learn yah ta read?

SOLOMON

A word here or there, but I have

no understanding of the written

text.

MISTRESS EPPS

Don't trouble yer self with it.

Same as the rest, Master bought

yah to work. Tha's all. And any

more'll earn yah a hun'red lashes.