When I first came across Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, I honestly wondered what a contemporary writer could add to the canon of antebellum literature. Could a Harvard graduate born after Dr. King’s assassination really provide any insight beyond that which had already been provided by many who had actually lived it? Contemporary African American writers have shown a tendency to delve into the psychological and spiritual lives of African Americans during slavery, and this novel is certainly a reflection of that trend, as Whitehead’s portrayal of a slave escape (an unfair shortening of what the novel truly is) is not only riveting storytelling but also a take on the psyche of the American slave that is fresh and different.
When I say it is different, I hesitate: It is, in many ways, a tale of the deplorable conditions of slavery that are all too familiar. The difference is the absolute bleakness with which Whitehead overwhelms the reader in a setting that gives birth to both his narrative and the psyches of his characters. Largely told through the limited third person perspective of the protagonist Cora (though other characters’ perspectives are also employed), the bleakness of her and her people’s lot emanates from the pages: bleak circumstances, little hope, and only momentary rests in a landscape rife with violence, danger, hate, and darkness. Indeed, Cora’s notion that the world seemed “As if… there were no places to escape to, only places to flee” is a notion the reader retains throughout this work.
What Whitehead has done is recreate a landscape similar to the one found in Zone One, a zombie tale that, like the novel reviewed herein, defies the conventions of its genre. The barren and bleak wasteland containing the possibility of danger at every turn, with only moments of rest in between episodes of danger, is reminiscent of The Underground Railroad. Such a world is expected in a zombie tale, and yes, dangers were possible at every turn for escaped slaves, but Whitehead brings them to life so masterfully that it is sometimes gut wrenching to turn the pages. Just as in Zone One, we know any respite or peace found in The Underground Railroad is, as its main characters also are, in constant danger. “Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation,” the narrator remarks, and time and again, the reader gets lost in the same reverie, only for the ugly horror looming in the background to intrude upon both the characters’ and the reader’s respite.
Whitehead’s prose is refreshing in its descriptiveness. His focus on darkness, blackness, and barrenness in many of his scenes adds to the suspenseful effect of ever-present danger. His haunting description of burned fields and mountains in Tennessee is among the most vivid and undeniably memorable of the novel. The biggest complaint by negative reviewers on Amazon is that it is “poorly written,” mostly referring to Whitehead’s tendency to use sentence fragments within his prose, yet these are typically well-placed and rhythmical, adding a verse-like effect and sometimes adding the effect of fragmentation of thoughts, speech, etc. Human beings often think and speak in fragments, and these seem fitting for Whitehead’s chosen point-of-view, making his characters more authentic. The technique also emphasizes the fragmented society about which he writes. In short, everything Whitehead does works together masterfully towards a single effect even Poe would admire, and the chilling horror in the aforementioned mountainside scenes even rivals Poe’s masterful descriptive powers.
There is yet another similarity to Zone One: the idea of “otherness.” In Zone One, Whitehead “challenges readers to think about how we dehumanize others, how society tramples and consumes individuals, and how vulnerable we all are" (from the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Vol. 2, "The Contemporary Period.) The Lieutenant, a character in Zone One, says of zombies, “Mustn’t humanize them. The whole thing breaks down unless you are fundamentally sure that they are not you." Clearly the whites depicted in The Underground Railroad, save the ones involved with the railroad itself, had applied that logic to African Americans. Accepting such a lie not only condones but also encourages the horrific violence Whitehead describes, violence with an unfortunate historical basis.
In short, The Underground Railroad is a contemporary masterpiece. Whitehead’s “Acknowledgements” section references several works to which he feels indebted; it is doubtless that he could have added hundreds more. While indebted to slave narratives, Whitehead has the ability to describe the realities of slavery with its ugly and naked truths woven into a nightmarish reality that is perhaps closer to depicting the psyche of enslaved men and women who longed for freedom than those primary sources whose audience shaped their purpose and limited their range of expression. Whitehead resists employing flowery prose and cliche figures of speech to attempt to depict what his setting, a claustrophobic nightmare characterized by darkness and ugliness and dotted with people just as ugly, does for him. The story is breathed forth from this setting almost effortlessly.
To call this a bleak book without hope, though, would be misguided. At one point, during an exploration of a library, Cora finds many stories of her people, “the stories of all the colored people she had ever known, the stories of black people yet to be born, the foundations of their triumphs.” The Underground Railroad is an important and significant contribution to these stories of the African American experience -- a story of struggles and triumphs, nightmares and dreams, hopes and fears. The Underground Railroad, like numerous other important African American works, makes room for hope and endurance in the midst of adversity and a universe that, though it may indifferently overwhelm its inhabitants, is still one in which we must live.
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I purchased it for my history course at college, however I’m already in this book. Read about the Cora's journey to find freedom to break free from the shackles of slavery helped me to have a true look at a brutal slavery system in the south at that time. Wonderful book!
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