Weekly Reader: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead: A Strange But Thrilling Alternate Universe Trip From Bondage To Freedom

Weekly Reader: The Underground Railroad By Colson Whitehead: A Strange But Thrilling Alternate Universe Trip From Bondage To Freedom
By Julie Sara Porter,
Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: I must admit as a child when I heard the term "The Underground Railroad," I took it literally. I imagined a literal train underneath the ground in which slaves escaped as freed blacks and white abolitionists conducted the actual trains to the North. Of course the term is figurative and the Underground Railroad was a fascinating history of people both white and black who took chances and saved lives challenging the Fugitive Slave Laws. But I never forgot my earlier naivete about picturing an actual train underground.

Colson Whitehead's thrilling alternate history of the Underground Railroad captured that childhood image by also taking the concept of "The Underground Railroad" literally by making it an actual rail system underground. (In fact one character scoffs at the idea that the term is metaphoric playing off on the Real-world system.) The book details the journey of Cora, an escaped slave as she encounters the Railroad on her journey towards the North into freedom.

Cora escapes with a fellow slave named Caesar, following the path of Cora's mother Mabel, who had earlier escaped without her. On their run to freedom, Cora kills a teenage boy who intends to capture her. Fearing retribution from the white community because of the boy's death, Cora and Caesar encounter an abolitionist who leads them to the first train stop on the Underground Railroad.

The book is exciting and filled with tension as Cora and Caesar encounter various difficulties at each stop. In South Carolina, they learn of a conspiracy to sterilize black women and render black men with syphilis (shades of the infamous Tuskegee Experiments before they appeared in the real timeline in the early 20th century). Before they can escape, the two are separated and Cora travels alone.
In Indiana, Cora encounters a farm run by escaped slaves and freed men. However, the freed men fear retaliation so they alert the slave catchers of the former slaves' presences. Each chapter Cora encounters a new struggle, but manages to escape using her strength, perseverance, and assistance from the Railroad's network of abolitionist, freed blacks, and conductors.

Cora is a three-dimensional protagonist as she makes her way to Freedom. She is fundamentally flawed such as her hatred for her mother who she feels abandoned her. She also is someone who is filled with a deep mistrust of most people, even the ones who are trying to help her, because of earlier abuse and sexual assault during her slavery days. It is to be expected that someone who had been through such a hard time would not find it easy to trust people. As she continues to run towards freedom, Cora also regains some of her faith and trust in others accepting help from those who offer it such as from Martin, a kindly abolitionist who hides her in his attic and Royal, one of the heads of the farming community in Indiana. This is just as much a journey of Cora's self-discovery as it is a run for freedom.

Whitehead also does a brilliant job of capturing other points of view besides Cora by giving other characters their own chapters. These chapters alternate with Cora's journey capturing Caesar and Mabel's less successful escapes than Cora's. (Caesar is killed by an angry mob and Mabel is bitten by a snake.) Whitehead also captures the points of view of white characters such as Ethel, Martin's reluctant wife who nurses Cora through illness and Ridgeway, a slave catcher who is equal parts Uncle Tom's Cabin's Simon Legree and Les Miserable's Inspector Javert. Ridgeway is obsessed with capturing Cora because he is consumed by memories of her mother, the only slave that he failed to catch. He is determined to even the score by capturing Cora and doesn't care how many men he has to sacrifice to do it. His obsession gets the better of him in his final encounter with Cora as she manages to attack him and get away on a push cart.

While The Underground Railroad is an interesting alternate history, some logistics are questionable. (Wouldn't people hear this large train system under their feet giving the whole system away? Aren't people even mildly curious where those mysterious train tracks lead? The book doesn't mention Harriet Tubman, but wouldn't that make her one of the first female train engineers and in this alternate timeline is she as successful as she was in the real timeline that "she was the only conductor who never lost a passenger?") But no matter. The Underground Railroad does what good alternate history is supposed to do. It mentions an intriguing possibility of how history could have played out and gives a brilliant story to surround that possibility.