Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad : A Review

Memoir of the black American Solomon Northup, a free man who was sold as a slave in the South, Twelve Years a Slave, later cinematized into the 2013 Oscar –Winning film by the same title left an indelible impression in the face of the post-colonial world. History records and keeps within its fold stories of unbearable torment, pain and anguish of a faction of the society by another. As civilization progresses, we cannot forget that the past is not , taintless,  unstained. To willfully forget this history is cowardice on the part of later generations and therefore courage lies in accepting this bitter and harsh reality of human violence. Arguments, discourses and debates are prejudiced from one’s point of view and therefore cannot be sanction for intolerance, violence and injustice.

Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is an imprint of absorbed facts as it narrates the tale of a slave-girl Cora, her escape from serfdom to factually uncertain liberation through the Underground Railroad. It is significant that the author has titled the book The Underground Railroad as it signifies the author’s liberal attitude and belief in the better side of humanity. The Underground Railroad is proof that not all is opprobrious – the network of abolitionists who helped to ferry escaping slaves far from the south, with secret routes and safe houses established throughout in the United States of America with the intention to help escaping humans from forced slavery.

Whiteheads story begins on a Georgia plantation and narrates the tale of torture, brutality, heinous crime against the blacks under the simulation of Cotton plantation. There is nothing inventive on the part of the author as he narrates the tale of Ajarry, her daughter Mabel, or her daughter Cora until Cora decides to escape like her mother did. To the reader, this takes a whole new meaning and a hope against hope that Cora will be free. This almost predictable ending in a filmy style appears pre-planned but the manner of bringing into effect and its paradoxical nature hooks the reader to the text. Not all who try to escape succeed but to be free is a dream shared by all.

Cora’s journey in pre-civil war America begins with her friend Caesar who brings to Cora the charm and possibility of freedom. To a growing girl like Cora, Randall’s plantation brings two-fold misery both from the masters and her own brethrens; such is the sadistic nature of the tortures in the plantation that it wrecks the inner core of any hope or optimism. In such a setting Caesar brings imaginative happiness and opportunity. He introduces her to the Underground Railroad. Their journey to North Carolina against all odds is not without its own jitters where the slaves become the guinea pigs for medical experiments in the name of black upliftment. This is followed by her confinement in an attic and view of horror on both the blacks and the abolitionists. Tennesse’s farm comes as a temporary relief soon cut short as the blacks must not read, they must not assemble and opinions are divided, closely chased by Ridgeway, the slave-catcher finally to end in a decrepit tunnel to an unknown destination. The author, however, is himself in doubt “America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes – believes with all its heart that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft and cruelty.”

Whiteheads easy and non-judgmental attitude to his narrative sensitizes the readers to the fact that even the skin colour can corrupt innocence. Hatred and oppression of slaves is an innate anomaly that Southern America has been born with. This story is a thrilling narrative of that truth but not all is dark under the light and possibilities wait. The writer leaves the ending open with the hope for new destination and freedom. Coras’ is not the story of a single woman’s determination and will to be free but the story of that part of Africa whose identity and ethnicity has been bound in chains in the unknown terrains of America under brutal horror and terrifying pain. Cora is a representative of that juncture in history.

Whiteheads narrative may not pose to be new invention and except the imaginative opportunity that is provided by the Underground Railroad, everything is history. But this history is déjà-vu; it is an epiphany, a metaphor for self-realization and growth as human beings. No wonder that the author took sixteen years to write this book and the book won him the Pulitzer prize in 2017.