Questions About The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead (Goodreads Author)

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Answered Questions (86)

Does anyone like that the author wrote the railroad as a physical, operating one? I felt it unnecessary and beyond the scope of possibility.

Cara This is a work of fiction, not historical fiction. North and South Carolina didn't have the political structure described in the book. Whitehead is us…moreThis is a work of fiction, not historical fiction. North and South Carolina didn't have the political structure described in the book. Whitehead is using the story of Cora's escape to get at the multitude of ways that blacks, in particular, have been dehumanized and mistreated by whites throughout the history of this country. A literal railroad is a literal representation of the darkness of the American journey for blacks and other people of color who were dispossessed and abused. One of the white characters (Lumbley?) speaks of how you can really only see American by train, but, as a white person, he has the freedom to travel without fear, with the opportunity to look out at the passing scenery and see America in all its glory and potential. As an enslaved woman who, even after escaping from her owner, is never really free, Cora can't see all of that. It is only at the end, as she finally has a chance to truly be free (or as free as a black woman could be) that she can travel above ground.

Another reviewer also pointed out that the mystery of who built the literal railroad, without the knowledge and under the feet of the white majority keeping slaves in bondage, is a powerful metaphor of how much slaves did for America, and how much of it is hidden.

When I started the novel, I didn't understand why the railroad was literal, but I get it now (or, it's more accurate to say, I get at least a portion of what Whitehead intended).(less)

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Does it depict much violence?

Jim Yes. Violence was an integral part of slavery.

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This question contains spoilers... (view spoiler)

juliemcl I came here to find out if anyone else had asked about this, and hadn't even remembered the reference to Sybil's brand. Thanks, Jenny, and thanks to H…moreI came here to find out if anyone else had asked about this, and hadn't even remembered the reference to Sybil's brand. Thanks, Jenny, and thanks to Hilary for asking it. For further food for thought, it's on page 255 (U.S. hardcover 1st edition): "A horseshoe puckered on Sybil's neck, ugly and purple--her first owner had raised draft horses." The answer to this question is powerful because the man at the end may have known Sybil or even be a relation of hers (father or brother?) from a time when Sybil's family had been more intact. Sybil and Cora had become like sisters on the Valentine farm, and she was sort of Molly's godmother or auntie. They were ripped away in an instant, with a good chance Cora would never see them again or that they could be dead. Having this man be from the same place as Sybil, maybe having known her or even being related to her, is a parting gift from Colson Whitehead to the reader.(less)

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Did anyone find the chapter about the grave robbers rather random? I have no idea why that was there. Did I miss something?

Dorothy That was the Dr that Cora saw who suggested that she try permanent birth control. I guess it was his origin story and showed just how terrible he real…moreThat was the Dr that Cora saw who suggested that she try permanent birth control. I guess it was his origin story and showed just how terrible he really was. Maybe it was meant to illustrate how even people from the North still didn't want the slaves to be entirely free either.(less)

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The first skyscraper came about in the 1880's. How come the one in this book comes before the Civil War? Paul

Charles Cole Colson Whitehead gave a partial answer to this question in an NPR interview with Terry Gross, Aug. 8, 2016 (http://www.npr.org/2016/11/18/5025580...),…moreColson Whitehead gave a partial answer to this question in an NPR interview with Terry Gross, Aug. 8, 2016 (http://www.npr.org/2016/11/18/5025580...), as he described the structure of his novel:
"And I thought, well, what if every state our hero went through - as he or she ranNorth - was a different state of American possibility? So Georgia has one sort of take on America and North Carolina [sic] - sort of like "Gulliver's Travels." The book is rebooting every time the person goes to a different state."

The “different state of American possibility” described in the South Carolina chapters is the era of “negro uplift” by paternalistic whites. Historically, this experiment wasn’t tried in the South until after Reformation, and to signal to readers that we’ve jumped ahead in time, Whitehead tells us about the marvelous skyscraper, the Griffin Building, and also describes Ceasar’s job on a factory conveyor belt (p. 103), although conveyor belts weren’t used in manufacturing until 1913, in Henry Ford’s factory.

And how did the white paternalism Whitehead describes help the former slaves? Sam, the white station agent who enthusiastically welcomed Cora to S.C., “was fond of his birthplace and an advocate of South Carolina’s evolution on matters of race. He didn’t know how the experiment would turn out . . . .” (P. 104) With the benefit of hindsight, Whitehead knows. The free medical care in his fictional, benevolent South Carolina includes forced sterilization of “[c]olored women who have already birthed more than two children,” (p. 113). Indeed, Cora briefly witnesses a woman who escaped the procedure but was caught. (p. 105.) Of course, this is not mere conjecture by the author; compulsory sterilization was common in the U.S. from the 1890’s until WWII, and was declared lawful by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell in1937.

Whitehead’s South Carolina may also include nonconsensual medical experiments: The first doctor who examined Cora takes a blood sample, explaining “Blood tells us a lot, . . . [a]bout diseases. How they spread. Blood research is the frontier.” (p. 101) This may be an allusion to the infamous “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” a U.S. Public Health Service medical experiment conducted from 1932 to 1972, in which African Americans infected with syphilis were given “free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance,” (Wikipedia, “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment”), but “None of the men infected were ever told they had the disease, and none were treated with penicillin even after the antibiotic became proven for the treatment of syphilis. . . . According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for ‘bad blood’, a local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue.” (Id.) By the way, penicillin was known to be an effective cure 25 years before the experiment was ended.

Why the time shift? Why didn’t Colson Whitehead write a more conventional historical novel? I think it’s too easy for readers of a story set entirely in the early 1800’s to think “Oh, the brutality of slavery was just terrible -- thank goodness it’s not like that today.” In Gulliver’s Travels style, Whitehead takes us to a fictional but realistic time and place where former slaves are treated with seeming kindness but are in fact mistreated.
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