Summary and Analysis of The Underground Railroad

Based on the Book by Colson Whitehead

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• Publisher: Worth Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781504044080
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The Underground Railroad tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Colson Whitehead's book. Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. This short summary and analysis of The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead includes:

• Historical context
• Chapter-by-chapter summaries
• Analysis of the main characters
• Themes and symbols
• Important quotes
• Fascinating trivia
• Glossary of terms
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work

About The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead: Colson Whitehead's National Book Award–winning The Underground Railroad is a bold, original, and unflinchingly brutal portrait of slavery during the darkest period in American history. On the cusp of womanhood, Cora is a runaway slave, pursued by her memories of abuse and abandonment, and by the implacable and notoriously cruel slave hunter known as Ridgeway. Her journey on the Underground Railroad—in Whitehead's conceit, a literal, subterranean railway—propels her journey across a dangerous landscape in search of freedom. The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of fiction.

Summary

Ajarry

Caesar, a slave on the Randall plantation in Georgia, suggests that Cora and he flee together to the North. Her refusal prompts a flashback to the story of her grandmother Ajarry, who was kidnapped in her native Benin and taken onboard a slave ship to South Carolina.

During the course of her lifetime, Ajarry was bought and sold many times. She came to understand that slaves were literally objects: Their value was determined by their usefulness. Ajarry’s own value as a woman, she reasoned, was that she could bring more slaves into the world; however, all of her children died, with the exception of Cora’s mother, Mabel.

Georgia

Cora’s mother disappears when she is eleven years old, leaving the girl adrift in plantation slave life. The only link she has to her family is a tiny garden plot that was tended by both her mother and grandmother.

When a young slave places a doghouse on the site, Cora destroys it with a hatchet and then confronts the slave. The incident earns Cora a reputation as a madwoman, someone not to be trifled with.

When Terrance Randall, one of the plantation’s owners, beats a slave boy with a cane, Cora throws her body over the child to take the punishment herself. This merits her a blow to the face from Terrance’s cane—and whippings on the days that follow.

Here we learn that Mabel, Cora’s mother, was not sold, but escaped from the Randall plantation. To sustain herself during her journey, Mabel dug up every sweet potato from her vegetable garden. For Cora, the tiny patch of land became not only a source of sustenance, but also a source of hope that she might one day be reunited with her mother.

When Cora realizes that Terrance Randall has decided to take her for a mistress, she accepts Caesar’s proposal to flee. The following night, they depart the plantation. Lovey, Cora’s friend, secretly follows the pair through the swamp.

The next night, the three are surprised by a group of bounty hunters. Cora kills one, and she and Caesar manage to escape, but Lovey is captured. Cora and Caesar make it to the house of a white man, Fletcher, who takes them to the next stop on their journey: a barn with a secret tunnel that leads to an improbable destination—a railroad, buried deep under the ground, that will transport them to freedom.

Ridgeway

Arnold Ridgeway, a blacksmith’s son, found his calling as a teenager when he joined the “patrollers,” who scoured the back roads of Georgia, hunting down runaway slaves. Ridgeway quickly graduated from patroller to slave hunter, traveling north to retrieve runaways from the free states and return them to their owners for rewards. His skill at tracking down slaves and his legendary cruelty earn him mythical status among slaves.

Ridgeway has formed his own gang of slave catchers who, in spite of interference from abolitionists and courts in the North, rarely failed to recapture an escapee. One of the few exceptions was Cora’s mother, Mabel, whose freedom Ridgeway regards as a personal failure. Cora’s escape convinces Ridgeway that the underground railroad must be operating in Georgia.

South Carolina

Cora and Caesar arrive by locomotive in South Carolina, a state with liberal views regarding “colored advancement.” Aided by Sam, a white man who is a member of the underground railroad, the pair assumes new identities, finds jobs, and lives essentially as free people, although in segregation.

They receive free medical treatment, during which the men are submitted to frequent blood tests and the women are encouraged to consider sterilization. Later, Sam discovers that the former slaves are guinea pigs in a vast experiment to control the size of black population (which, by 1810, was nearly equal to the white population in South Carolina).

Shortly after, Ridgeway arrives in town, and Cora escapes capture by descending again into the tunnel that leads to the underground railroad, but Caesar is left behind.

Stevens

Dr. Aloysius Stevens, the physician who Cora met with in South Carolina, paid for his medical studies with a part-time job as a body snatc...

Table of contents

• Title
• Disclaimer
• Contents
• Context
• Overview
• Cast of Characters
• Summary
• Character Analysis
• Themes and Symbols
• Author’s Style
• Direct Quotes and Analysis
• Trivia
• What’s That Word?
• Critical Response
• About Colson Whitehead
• For Your Information
• Bibliography
• Copyright