Inhumanity In Colson Whitehead's 'The Underground Railroad'

Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad contains an abundant amount of trauma. This book focuses on a young woman named Cora, who escapes from slavery in the South in search of her freedom in the North. By reading this novel the readers explore the new ways that inhumanity can be expressed. Cora is a victim and witnesses several traumatizing events. These occurrences have made her realize that the brutality is considered normal and is no longer a surprise to anyone during this pre-war era. Whitehead focuses this slave narrative as a means to rethink the traumatic in slavery.

This novel begins with Cora living in Georgia on a cotton plantation. Cora encounters various forms of abuse and decides to run away with a fellow slave named Caesar. Caesar tells her of this underground railroad they can take to escape.While on her journey she works at a museum and learns

The men would act sexually and violent against a woman’s will. The women were expected to cook,clean, take care of their house and children and still pleasure them when they wanted. In this novel there is a few broad overviews of what the life for women was like and how it affected them. Vásquez claims that, “”The Underground Railroad” is Whitehead’s own attempt at getting things right,not by telling us what we already know but by vindicating the powers of fiction to interpret the world”. Due to the observation Vásquez provides, it is understood how Whitehead tries to provide his own attempt and spreading and revising history. Vásquez believes that by Whitehead trying to interpret the world by using the powers of fiction to reach his readers. In this slave narrative Whitehead confirms that, “White men and brown men had used the woman’s bodies violently, their babies came out stunted and shrunken, beatings had knocked the sense out of their heads ”(16). Whitehead is validating that women being treated