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 160
Turner questions Solomon about his background and skills, then promotes him to driver in the sugar house and offers him paid fiddle work.
- Scene 161
At the sugar house, a driver hands Solomon a whip and explains that it is meant to make the workers obey.
- Scene 162
The overseer orders Solomon to drive the workers; Solomon barely lashes them at first, but the overseer whips him until he does the job more forcefully.
- Scene 163
This scene
