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

Solomon and the other captives spend the night packed into an airless shack, coughing and struggling for space.

Scene 154 of 211 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:40 into a 2:22 film

The story so farBefore scene 154

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 151
A caterpillar plague ruins Epps’s cotton; he blames the enslaved workers and lashes them in the field.
Scene 152
Epps’s cart passes a runaway slave being torn by dogs while white and Native American patrolmen watch; Solomon carries his fiddle with him.
Scene 153
Epps leases his workers to Judge Turner as another enslaved woman is separated from a male relative; Solomon sees Anna comfort her before Epps warns his slaves not to disgrace him.
Scene 154
This scene

154INT. SLAVE SHACK - NIGHT

Slaves are crammed into the shack - LITERALLY ON TOP OF EACH OTHER - as they try to sleep. Some lay, some sit up. Packed in like cattle, there is barely room to move let alone draw a deep, clean breath. There is a real risk of suffocating in the mass. Among them some cough and wheeze. A CHILD CRIES...

Among them is Solomon who must believe at this point that his life has reached its very lowest point. The odds of survival are slight, let alone the chance of actually ever returning to his family. This clearly weighs on him as he struggles to find anything like comfortable space in the pen.