In the 19th-century United States, there was a vast network of routes and safe locations for people fleeing slavery. They are both pursued by Ridgeway, and both eventually escape his clutches. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, the much-acclaimed new novel from the author of such piercing works as The Intuitionist and John Henry Days, bears powerful echoes of both pre-Civil War slave narratives and slave testimony gathered for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers Project of the 1930s. Colson Whitehead uses multiple literary devices in his award-winning 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad tells the story of Cora, a runaway slave who travels from state to state on railroad cars physically under the ground of the American South. Stuck? These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Read the Study Guide for The Underground Railroad…, Delusion and Reality in The Underground Railroad, Past and Future Blues: A Comparison of Historical Themes in 'Sonny's Blues' and 'The Underground Railroad', View the lesson plan for The Underground Railroad…, View Wikipedia Entries for The Underground Railroad…. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead: Historical and Literary Context: Home. Colson Whitehead uses multiple literary devices in his award-winning 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad. The system of safe houses, transportation, and other aid was known as the Underground Railroad. The unfortunate reality is that the lives of black women at this time in the Southern states of the USA were dominated by slavery. The narrator is a third-person narrator who knows Cora's thoughts and history. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. In Whitehead’s book, the Underground Railroad is quite literally a subway, albeit a desolate and frightfully unpredictable one. Do they deserve to be called heroes? Just some brave sad souls darting across open fields and wading in shallow streams and moving from tree line to tree line. Ajarry is raped by slave traders aboard the ship that takes her to America, foreshadowing the rape of Mabel by fellow slave Moses and of Cora by fellow slaves Edward and Pot. Steve Nathans-Kelly is a writer and editor based in Ithaca, New York. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. The Underground Railroad essays are academic essays for citation. Rothstein, Talia. Los Angeles Times Book Review. The slave catcher relentlessly pursues runaway slaves throughout the country, embodying a seemingly inescapable system. She is described as a discerning, intelligent, and determined character. Black actors serve as the only living exhibits in the Living History museum; whites, such as the captain of the slave ship, are portrayed by wax figures. Rothstein, Talia. The Underground Railroad takes its name from the efforts of abolitionists and other individuals with antislavery beliefs to aid runaway enslaved persons in escaping their so-called "masters." There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.” Genre fiction feels empty when certain literary devices—character traits, setting, images—exist only to satisfy the plot's request. © 2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. But the magic realist bent of Whitehead’s novel and its unorthodox take on the Underground Railroad make it hard to pin down. Morrison’s Sethe, a free black woman living in Cincinnati several years after the Civil War, is modeled partly on Margaret Garner, a woman who escaped slavery in Kentucky in 1856 with her four children, her husband and his parents. The novel recounts the harrowing journey of a teen named Cora who escapes a Georgia plantation on the Underground Railroad. I think the slave catcher’s point of view is probably the default setting on American history.” In the modern-day United States, where the century’s most potent racial justice movement has emerged in response to the aggressive tactics of racial-profiling police, and a real estate mogul and reality TV star has made himself a national populist hero by goading the president of the United States into showing his papers, Whitehead’s point about the prevalence and persistence of the slave catcher’s point of view seems hard to dispute. The book’s narrator and central character, Victor, is a slave who’s been enlisted to pose as an agent of an anti-slavery network known as Underground Airlines. https://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/~/media/ArtsEdge/LessonPrintables/grade-3-4/harriet_tubman_codes_and_phrases_used_on_the_underground_railroad.ashx. Jacobs’ torture was watching her own children pass by through a tiny “loophole” in the attic wall; Cora’s window on the world reveals minstrel shows and public lynchings. Books … She is joined in her escape by Caesar, a fellow slave who has arrived at the plantation from his native Virginia. Though Cora has no desires to leave the Randall plantation, her violent treatment at the hands of the masters inspires her to flee, like her mother before her. How long that gonna take?” Liz replies, “I said I would tell you of tomorrow. Many chapters are told from Cora's point of view, but alternating chapters are written from the perspective of secondary characters. In... Who is the narrator of The Underground Railroad? Thus the idea of the network as an airline “is a figure of speech, the root of a grand extended metaphor… A plane is big and hard to hide, and defending the sovereign air space of the several states is an enumerated responsibility of the National Guard.”, Even more to the point, Winters offers this take on the most common, least reported means of escape: “The other thing to remember, of course, was that most people got no help at all… No planes and no cars, or truck, either. "The Underground Railroad Literary Elements". Cora and her mother's escapes from the Randall plantation are parallel narratives. Sources and Historical parallels in any novel that concerns abolitionism reason not to inescapable system train ride Cora... Should not be underestimated opinion, and horribly abused by their masters discuss the novel is told by third-person... This page in the Railroad even more askew than Whitehead ’ s Underground! 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