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

Epps announces the cotton weights and questions the low total; Solomon explains that he and the others buried Abram.

Scene 186 of 211 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Treach
Epps
Solomon

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:59 into a 2:22 film

The story so farBefore scene 186

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 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
Solomon, Bob, and Wiley bury Abram in a rough grave beside the field.
Scene 186
This scene

186INT. MASTER EPPS'S PLANTATION/GIN HOUSE - EVENING

As always, the day's pickings are again being weighed.

TREACH

One hundred sixty pounds for

Wiley.

Clearly displeased, Epps pulls Wiley from the line.

EPPS

Platt?

TREACH

Eighty eight pounds for Platt.

Epps moves to Solomon. As way of explanation but with defiance:

SOLOMON

...We buried Abram today...