The Underground Railroad
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The Underground Railroad was a system that was secretly developed to aid the fugitive slaves who were escaping to freedom. Involving in Underground Railroad activities was dangerous and illegal. Therefore to help keep their mission secret, secret codes were created. The essence of the railroad was to help the escapees from slave states to get into Free states. The term Underground Railroad was used to refer to the entire system which consisted different routes that were referred to as lines. The individuals along the routes who helped the slaves on their way to freedom were referred to as conductors while the escapees were referred to as cargos. The safe places which were used to hide along the lines along the Underground Railroad were referred to as stations. The Underground Railroad is metaphorically used to refer to secret routes and safe houses that were used by enslaved African-American to help them escape into Free states. The Underground Railroad is a symbol of the length the African American go to escape domination and have control on their own lives
The author uses Cora as the protagonist in this book to represent and explain the life of a slave and what they went through on daily basis. Her granny Ajarry had been kidnapped as a child from Africa and brought to America as a slave. Once in America Ajarry is sold several times to different plantations where she works as a laborer. She is married thrice and has five children although only one survives who happens to be Cora’s mother. Mabel Cora’s mother runs away leaving Cora as a stray. Cora is later placed in a hob which is a cabin for wretched women. Cora has a confrontation with Blake who decides to build a doghouse in Cora’s garden. Cora agitated by the act destroys the doghouse using a hatchet and also cuts the dog’s tail which leads to her being gang-raped by a group of four enslaved men. Several themes are evident in this book and the author uses different characters and settings to enhance each. At the begging, the family as a theme emerges in that the author gives the lineage from which Cora hails from. We are made to understand how her granny Ajarry was brought from Africa and sold as a slave in America. The family bond Mabel had to her daughter makes her feel guilty and plans of coming back to the land she had escaped from so as to unite with her daughter though her plans are not successful as she is bitten by a snake and dies beside a swamp. During a birthday at a plantation in a plantation owned by Terrace Randall, Cora defends a fellow slave and ends up being ruthlessly beaten for intervening.
Heritage as a theme first emerges in the situation where Cora defends the garden she had inherited from Mabel. The slaves also love one another and protect one another a character thought to have been a character inherited from their motherland although they were in a foreign country.
There are different situations where endurance and rebellion are seems as major themes in the book. The slaves are meted by different hard situations which are caused by their masters and the difficult jobs they have to do for their white masters. There are also instances where their fellow slaves cause them to suffer but majority of them do not give up. The slaves also have to endure difficulties as they escape via the underground railroads. This includes the long distances they have to travel on foot some with their children as they run away from the bounty killers. The slaves also rebel from the dominance by the white masters who torture and deny them their rights. With the help of the abolitionists, the rebel slaves are able to travel from different parts of the slave states to the free states bearing in mind the danger the were exposing themselves to.
Majority of the slaves including Cora had never known freedom in their lives due to the expansive and brutal systems of slavery. Most of them including Cora still had minute dreams of freedom though they rarely considered running away. Many of the slaves would not consider ways of freeing themselves from the bondage of slavery due to the high probability of dying as they attempted escaping. The link between death and freedom is encapsulated in the “freedom trail” which is an endless path in which all those trying to escape and those who attempt to help them are hanged and displayed for people to see.it also acted as a warning to the slaves that the search for freedom would end in death. According to Cora life on the plantations was a form of living death in which she sees it as a gradual way of being killed by the white slave-owners.
Whitehead chooses to use a literal railroad as a literal representation of the difficulties and the darkness in the American journey experienced by the blacks and many other people of color.by using the train one has the freedom and opportunity to travel while admiring the beautiful passing scenery without fear. Cora who had been an enslaved woman can’t see this and only had the opportunity to travel above the ground at the end. It also insinuate that majority of the slaves do not really feel free even after having escaped from their masters. The railroad is often seen as a metaphor for personal freedom. It could also be seen to signal the evolution between different stages in Cora’s journey. It also explains how different stations in different states had people with different personalities. It also gives a sense of magical realism to the story since there were other many impossible things in the book as well. It is not meant to be accurate as it is meant to provide an alternative reality within a reality that existed to make a point about an American history that is shared
Work cited
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad : A Novel. New York, Anchor Books, A Division Of Penguin Random House Llc, 2018.