The novel of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead takes place in the early 1800’s during the slavery era, in the southern state of Georgia. This realistic- fiction novel expresses themes of freedom, violence, the classification “good” and “bad”, influential pasts, racial hardship. Whitehead portrays a magnificent story of a young slave named Cora, who travels across the southern states on a railroad cars that are physically underground. Cora is persuaded by a another slave named Caesar to escape her home of the Georgia plantation. However, hot on their trail is slave catcher Ridgeway, who has a personal axe to grind with Cora. The Underground Railroad is composed of three main important features that shape the entire book. The first being, that the novel displays a certain remarkable combination of realistic fiction and historical fiction. Even though the actual “Underground Railroad” in the 19th century was held above ground on train cars, the novel envisions the underground railroad train cars running through tunnels beneath the ground. Not any of the characters within the book know exactly where the tunnels came from, how they formed, who discovered them, or even who was brave enough to create this system. The tunnels underground seem to lean towards metaphorical sense than a literal sense, resulting in an adventurous journey for Cora. However, while maintaining that aura of optimistic hope , various other parts of the novel contain the historic painful truths