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Historical Allegory In The Underground Railroad By Colson Whitehead

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The Underground Railroad is a thrilling, genre-bending story written by Colson Whitehead. The story is based on an escape from slavery. It is about a young slave woman named Cora, who escapes from a plantation in Georgia. The story contains uncomfortable truths and extraordinary prose. The story starts in Africa showing how Cora’s grandmother Ajarry, is snatched by her captors. Her kidnappers then rape her which leaves her so devastated, that she tries to take her own life two times by starving herself and by trying to drown herself. Colson later introduces the reader to Mabel, Ajarry’s daughter. Mabel is able to run away from the plantation and its horrible owner, Randall. Randall conducts a fruitless and wild search for Mabel. We are later …show more content…

This instance sparks the novel. This is because the author, Colson Whitehead takes the historical allegory on the group of abolitionists who assisted in ferrying the slaves out of the southern part of America and he turns it into a steampunk, sparkling reality. Caesar and Cora follow a trapdoor and then down to the subterranean platform, a place where the rails extend into darkness. At this point, a train heading to the north pulls up. This is an excellent conceit and as from this point forward, the author gives the book a new visionary life. The author of this book, Colson Whitehead is seen as one of the authors who are able to incorporate several genres in the same book effortlessly. In this book, he is trying to incorporate as many genres as he can, with a roguish adventure and science fiction meeting fantasy, all of these against the stage set of a recreated 19th century …show more content…

She is able to experience love for a short while, but she ends up losing it when the mean slave catcher, Ridgeway finally catches up with her and she has to flee again. One interesting thing about this narrative by Colson Whitehead is how he is able to refine the narrative using a brilliant sharpness. Besides the chaotic intermingling of various genres in the novel, a particular metaphorical flavor surrounds Cora’s journey. In every state Cora goes too, the author is able to present the readers with a different face of the awfulness surrounded by slavery. For instance, in South Carolina, it appears to be compassionate in its approach towards the “negro problem.” However, it is clear that South Carolina is a state filled with dark secrets below its untouched exterior. On the other hand, in North Carolina, the black people are being pushed away from the state completely. In this state, there exist no black individuals except at the boundaries of this region. In North Carolina, there are mobs who are always on the move looking for and hanging any black person found in their territory, in this region, black corpses were seen scattered in every direction. When Cora, comes to North Carolina, she is forced to live in the loft. She later proceeds to Tennessee, a land tormented by the

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Everyone who has taken an American History class should be familiar with the southern slaves of the nineteenth escaping to freedom in the north, but often do not realize they were not the first ones with the idea of running away. Gregory Wigmore is a doctoral candidate for Department of History at the Univerity of California. In his article, “Before the Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland,” he explained how Canadian slaves escaped to North America in the Great Lake region before the times of the Underground Railroad. During this time the gradual emancipation of slaves was in effect in Canada since 1793, meaning that child slaves were still acknowledged as human property until they were twenty-five years of

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"I've told you too much. How come they want all this stuff from the colored people anyways? Do they take any stories from the white people...? " a Georgia woman.

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When the black group prevailed, they couldn’t even imagine what laid ahead at the next stop. The train was brought to a halt in the town of Scottsboro, Alabama. Surrounding the train was a group of officers, and men, armed and looking irate. Two white women emerged from the train and stated that they have been raped. The group took the black boys to a jail to be tried in the coming days.

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The south struggle with all the change and becoming to understand how things work without

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Ridgeway plays significant role in Cora’s life. Whitehead introduced Ridgeway-the slave catcher in Cora’s life because they both held different purposes of life but they were crossing each other’s path with a conflict and that makes the story plot even stronger. In addition, Whitehead described his character in depth so that we can understand why he was after Cora and we get to know both side of the story. Ridgeway wanted to fulfill own purpose whereas, Cora wanted to fulfill Arjarray’s wish to escape and die outside of the Randall plantation.

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Some little-known facts that Foner puts in his monograph can backed by others. An example of this is where Foner states that Torrey was credited with creating the Underground Railroad as an organized system. Stanley Harrold, a professor at South Carolina State University, agrees with Foner and states that Torrey “became an antislavery martyr… for having initiated an underground railroad” (Harrold, 2000, pg. 274). Since Foner only recently published his monograph, most of the information that he infers would supported until

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The author proves in Georgia that not only was self preservation abundant but also came in different shapes and forms in slave communities. Whitehead proves this through the characters in Georgia. Whether it be Caesar's will to escape, or Cora's protection of her garden, or Nag's "licentious practices." Caesar's will to escape is a pretty evident form of self preservation . Caesar want to escape the Randall Plantation for obvious reasons.

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The Significance of Harriet Tubman and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s involvement in the Underground Railroad (as part of the Abolitionist Movement, 1850-1860) The Underground Railroad is not what it may appear in its most literal sense; it is in fact a symbolical term for the two hundred year long struggle to break free from slavery in the U.S. It encompasses every slave who tried to escape and every free person who helped them to do so. The origins of the railroad are hidden in obscurity yet eventually it expanded into one of the earliest Civil Rights movements in the US.

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The Abolitionists were people that were against slavery, and the group was dedicated to the cause of getting rid of it. Most of abolitionists were from the North, and the Abolitionist movement started in the 1830s. The Underground Railroad is the most thought of when we think of the Abolitionist Movement. The Underground Railrod helped fugitive slaves from the south, get to the North. Most of the slaves that went through this process made it to their destination, and became free African Americans like they had wanted to be.

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Let us begin with George, Celia’s understandably treacherous slave lover, and his unreasonable demands that set Celia’s case into motion. George’s actions are an example of the common frustration and desperation of slave men who had no control over the sexual abuse of their loved ones by white masters (McLaurin 139-140). His was a reaction to a smoldering attack upon his masculinity, an attack that was a direct result of the dehumanization upon which slavery rested. Because the South was a slave society, this master-slave relationship structure echoed throughout every other aspect of southern life (Faragher, 204 & 215). In Celia’s case, we see this truth through Virginia and Mary Newsom’s position of powerlessness.

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In particular, Whitehead’s use of imagery, character interactions and figurative language brings to attention aspects of race relations that were and are still often misunderstood or disregarded by society. It is important to note, however, that the oppressed do not remain oppressed forever as demonstrated by heroine Cora ’s persisting efforts to break free. Thus, through his uncensored narrative of slavery, Whitehead sets precedence for the impassioned social resistance movements in the modern era by arguing that the most enduring road is

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Annotated bibliography Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. Print.

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The Underground Railroad was a system of abolitionists that assisted runaway slaves on their path to freedom. The Underground railroad was started by abolitionist and former slave, Harriet Tubman. Once Tubman obtained her freedom, she decided to go back into slave states and help other slaves achieve freedom. On the railroad were conductors, or people that aided slaves on the railroad by providing them shelter and safety. Abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, wrote about the Underground Railroad and spread awareness of the hardships slaves face.

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Literature is often credited with the ability to enhance one’s understanding of history by providing a view of a former conflict. In doing so, the reader is able to gain both an emotional and logistical understanding of a historically significant event. Additionally, literature provides context that can help the reader develop a deeper understanding of the political climate of a time period. Within the text of The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead’s, the use of literary elements such as imagery, metaphor, and paradox amplifies the reader’s understanding of early 19th century slavery and its role in the South of the United States of America. Throughout the novel, Whitehead utilizes a girl named Cora to navigate the political and personal consequences of escaping slavery, the Underground Railroad, and her transition

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The Underground Railroad. A metaphor as it was, it was neither a railroad nor was it even underground. In the time where slavery became a divided issue with the status of legality in various parts of the country, the underground railroad found its beginnings through collective organized efforts from abolitionists and allies alike to help enslaved African americans to escape to territories and states where they could be free from slavery. It was a loosely-developed system that also included series of routes led by “conductors” such as Harriet Tubman, for escaping slaves, or “passengers”.

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