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

Solomon, Bob, and Wiley bury Abram in a rough grave beside the field.

Scene 185 of 211 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:59 into a 2:22 film

The story so farBefore scene 185

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 182
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 183
The plantation horn sounds, summoning the slaves to another workday.
Scene 184
Abram collapses from the heat in the cotton field; Edward pours water on him, but he does not get up.
Scene 185
This scene

185EXT. MASTER EPPS'S PLANTATION/FIELD - LATER

We are beyond the main of the plantation, the cotton field in the background. Solomon, Bob and Wiley are digging a grave in the dirt. The uncovered body of Abram lays near. Having dug down an appropriate distance, the three men take the body and, very unceremoniously, place it into the ground. That done, they begin to cover it with dirt. It is all the more of a funeral that Abram will receive.