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 174
Turner asks Solomon to identify the men who attacked him, now captured as runaways; Solomon refuses to accuse them, and the patrolmen drag them away for public punishment.
- Scene 175
Solomon gathers bark from a white maple.
- Scene 176
Solomon boils the maple bark in a tin cup over a fire.
- Scene 177
This scene
