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| Author | Colson Whitehead |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Slavery |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | August 2, 2016 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 320 |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for Fiction National Book Award for Fiction Andrew Carnegie Medal Arthur C. Clarke Award |
| ISBN | 978-0-385-54236-4 |
The Underground Railroad is ahistorical fiction novel by American authorColson Whitehead, published byDoubleday in 2016. Thealternate history[1] novel tells the story of Cora, aslave in theAntebellum South during the 19th century, who makes a bid for freedom from herGeorgia plantation by following theUnderground Railroad, which the novel depicts as an actualrail transport system with safe houses and secret routes.[2] The book was a critical and commercial success, hitting the bestseller lists and winning several literary awards, including thePulitzer Prize for Fiction, theNational Book Award for Fiction, theArthur C. Clarke Award, and the 2017Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. ATV miniseries adaptation, written and directed byBarry Jenkins, was released in May 2021.
The book alternates between the perspective of the lead character, Cora, and chapters told from a different character's perspective. The featured characters are: Ajarry, Cora's grandmother; Ridgeway, aslave catcher; Stevens, aSouth Carolina doctor conducting a social experiment; Ethel, the wife of aNorth Carolina station agent; Caesar, a fellow enslaved person who escapes the plantation with Cora; and Mabel, Cora's mother. The chapter locations are:Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina,Tennessee,Indiana, and (an undefined) "North".
Cora is an enslaved person on a plantation in Georgia and an outcast after her mother, Mabel, ran off without her. She resents Mabel for escaping, although it is later revealed that her mother tried to return to Cora but died from a snake bite and never reached her. Caesar approaches Cora about a plan to flee. Reluctant at first, she eventually agrees as her situation with her master and fellow slaves worsens. During their escape, they encounter a group of slave catchers, who capture Cora's young friend Lovey. Cora is forced to kill a twelve-year-old boy to protect herself and Caesar, eliminating any possibility of merciful treatment should she be recaptured. With the help of an inexperiencedabolitionist, Cora and Caesar find the Underground Railroad, depicted as a literal underground train system that runs throughout the south, transporting runaways northwards. They take a train to South Carolina.[3]
Upon learning of their escape, Ridgeway begins a hunt for the pair, mainly in revenge for Mabel, who is the only escapee he has ever failed to capture. Cora and Caesar have taken up comfortable residence in South Carolina under assumed names. South Carolina is enacting a program where the government owns formerly enslaved people but employs them, provides medical treatment, and gives them communal housing. The two enjoy their time there and put off the decision to leave until Cora learns of plans tosterilize black women and useblack men as test subjects in an experiment to track the spread and degenerative effects ofsyphilis. Ridgeway arrives before the two can leave, and Cora is forced to return to the Railroad alone. She later learns that Caesar was killed by an angry mob after having been caught and jailed by Ridgeway.
Cora eventually arrives at a closed-down station in North Carolina. She is found by Martin, the son of the station's former operator. North Carolina has recently decided to abolish slavery, usingindentured servants instead, and violently executes any runaway slaves found in the state (as well as somefreedmen). Terrified of what the North Carolinians might do to an abolitionist, Martin hides Cora in his attic for several months. Cora becomes ill and is reluctantly treated by Martin's wife, Ethel. While Cora is down from the attic, a raid is conducted on the house, and Ridgeway recaptures her while the mob executes Martin and Ethel.
Ridgeway takes Cora back toward Georgia, detouring through Tennessee to return another enslaved person to his owner. While stopped in Tennessee, Ridgeway's traveling party is attacked by the free-born Royal and two escaped enslaved people, who release Cora. Cora travels to a farm in Indiana owned by a free black man named Valentine, along with Royal. The farm is populated by several freedmen and escapees, living and working in harmony. Royal, an operator on the Railroad, begins a romantic relationship with Cora, although she remains hesitant because of a rape by other slaves in her childhood.
A small faction of freedmen, fearing that the presence of escaped slaves would ruin their peaceful lives, oppose the harboring of non-members of the community. Eventually, the farm is burned, and many people, including Royal, are killed in a raid by whiteHoosiers. Various theories are held concerning the source of the attack. Ridgeway recaptures Cora and forces her to take him to a closed-down Railroad station nearby. When they arrive, she pushes him down a flight of stairs, severely injuring him. When last seen, he whispers thoughts on the "American imperative" to Homer, who writes them in his journal. Cora then runs off down the tracks. Eventually, she emerges from the underground to find a caravan traveling West. She is given a ride by one of the wagons' black drivers.[4]
In the "Acknowledgments", Whitehead mentions two famous escaped enslaved people: "Frederick Douglass andHarriet Jacobs". While in Jacobs's native North Carolina, Cora has to hide in an attic where, like Jacobs, she is not able to stand, but like her, can observe the outside life through a hole that "had been carved from the inside, the work of a previous occupant".[5] Martin Ebel, who observed this parallel in a review for the SwissTages-Anzeiger, also observes that the "Freedom Trail", where the victims of North Carolinian lynchings hang from trees, has a historic predecessor in the crosses the Romans raised along theAppian Way to kill the enslaved people who had joinedSpartacus'slave rebellion, written on byArthur Koestler in his novelThe Gladiators. Ridgeway reminds Ebel of inspectorJavert, the hero's merciless persecutor inVictor Hugo'sLes misérables.[6]
InThe New Yorker, reviewerKathryn Schulz likens Ridgeway to bothCaptain Ahab ofMoby-Dick and the slave catcher August Pullman of the television seriesUnderground: "Ridgeway ... and August Pullman, in "Underground", are Ahab-like characters, privately and demonically obsessed with tracking down specific fugitives".[7] Both Ahab and Ridgeway have a soft spot for a black boy: Ahab for the cabin-boy Pip, and Ridgeway for 10-year-old Homer, whom he bought as a slave and set free the next day.[8]
In Whitehead's North Carolina, all blacks have been "abolished".[9] Martin Ebel observes the parallel to the Nazi exterminations of Jews and also the parallel between Cora's concealment andAnne Frank's.[6] Another parallel to literature on Nazi Germany may be found in the erection of three gallows by Cora's plantation master. He had the three gallows erected for Cora and her two fellow fugitives to put them to a cruel death as soon as each was returned.[10] InAnna Seghers's novelThe Seventh Cross, written in exile between 1938 and 1942, seven prisoners escape from aconcentration camp. The camp commander has a cross erected for each of them to be tortured there after being returned.
| External videos | |
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 Presentation by Whitehead at the Miami Book Fair onThe Underground Railroad, November 20, 2016,C-SPAN |
The novel received positive reviews from critics.[11] Reviewers praised it for its commentary on the past and present of the United States.[12][13]
In 2019,The Underground Railroad was ranked 30th onThe Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.[14] The novel was voted the greatest of its decade inPaste and was third place (along withJennifer Egan'sA Visit from the Goon Squad) in a list byLiterary Hub.[15]
The novel has received a number of awards, including the 2017Pulitzer Prize for Fiction[16] and the 2016National Book Awardfor Fiction.[17] The previous book to win both the Pulitzer and the National Book prizes wasThe Shipping News, byE. Annie Proulx, in 1993.[16] While awarding the Pulitzer Prize, the committee recognized Whitehead's novel for a "smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America".[18]The Underground Railroad was also awarded theArthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction literature,[19] the 2016Goodreads Choice Award.[20], and the 2017Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.[21] It was longlisted for the2017 Man Booker Prize.[22][23] WhenThe Underground Railroad was published in the United States in August 2016, it was selected forOprah's Book Club.[24][25] In 2024,The New York Times named it the seventh best book on their100 Best Books of the 21st Century list.[26]
On August 5, 2020, acrater onPluto's moonCharon was named Cora, after the character in the novel, by theInternational Astronomical Union's Working Group forPlanetary System Nomenclature.[27]
It was announced in March 2017 thatAmazon was making a limited drama series based onThe Underground Railroad, written and directed byBarry Jenkins.[28] The series was released onAmazon Prime Video on May 14, 2021.[29]
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