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 177
By the cabin’s dying coals, Solomon tests the maple-bark liquid as ink and writes his letter to an old acquaintance.
- Scene 178
Solomon tells Celeste the letter is ready but has no safe way to mail it; she gives up her isolated refuge and returns to her master, leaving Solomon behind.
- Scene 179
After the cotton crop recovers, Epps welcomes his leased slaves back and taunts Solomon about becoming a driver; Solomon sees how badly Patsey has been scarred.
- Scene 180
This scene
