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

As Patsey tends Abram and Armsby treats Solomon’s back, Armsby recounts how he became a failed, alcoholic overseer and returned to plantation work.

Scene 182 of 211 · ≈ 2 min on screen · Act two

Armsby
Solomon

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:56 into a 2:22 film

The story so farBefore scene 182

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 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
Armsby joins the cotton field, where the unskilled white laborer does little work.
Scene 181
Epps compares cotton totals and orders Solomon and Abram whipped for falling short, while he merely tells Armsby to work harder.
Scene 182
This scene

182EXT. EPPS'S PLANTATION/SLAVE SHACK - NIGHT

We come in after the punishment has been dealt. Patsey tends to Uncle Abram's back as Armsby applies liniments to Solomon's. As he does, Armsby muses:

ARMSBY

It's a tragedy. How does such

come to pass? Working a field and

picking cotton like a lowly hand.

I'm of a damn sight better

station. And my desires never

lacked for imagination, though I

will admit they have at times been

short on ingenuity. But only at

times. I've worked as an

overseer, you know.

SOLOMON

I did not, sir.

ARMSBY

Not "sir." Just Armsby. Not owed

more than any other in the field.

I worked plantations from

Virginia, down into Alabama. I

could manage easy a hundred slaves

and have done so. But to toil in

the field? Never thought that

would come to pass. Never. But

times are desperate. Where once I

had said "no" to Epps and his

merger offerings, I returned cap

in hand. ...Look at what I've

become.

SOLOMON

How did you arrive at such a

place, if I may ask?

ARMSBY

Ask. It's just conversation.

From a pocket Armsby produces a flask.

ARMSBY (CONT'D)

I became a little too dependant on

the whisky, a little too

undependable on the job. Before

you say I'm just a sorry drunkard,

let me state my case: As reliable

employment as overseeing is, it's

no easy chore on the spirit. I

say no man of conscious can take

the lash to another human day in,