Similarities Between The Underground Railroad And Jesus'son And The Hero's Journey

Great Essays
The Hero’s Journey The hero’s journey is a topic that we covered a lot over the course of this semester. We applied it in some shape or way to almost every book we have read. In this paper I am going to talk about the similarities and differences of the hero’s journey and other things in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and in Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. Both of these books tell the story of a journey of one specific character and how that one character evolves over time and adapts to new situations. The two books also use innovative ways to tell these stories and describe the actions that take place in them. The stories of The Underground Railroad and Jesus’ Son are similar and different in their own ways because of the journey …show more content…
It would be very hard to go on a journey like Cora or Fuckhead and not come out of it as a different person. This quote from The Underground Railroad perfectly describes why Cora changes a lot during her journey. “The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it.” (128) Cora and her family have been slaves for 3 generations on the same plantation. Cora and her mom, Mabel, were born and raised on the plantation so all they really know is life on the plantation. Once Cora is gone from the plantation she is able to see how life really is. She is able to experience what it is like to be a free person, something no one in her family has been able to do for 3 generations. Cora experiences a lot of change once she is a “free person” because she doesn’t have a horrific master bossing her around and she makes more money doing better work than working on a plantation. In similarity Fuckhead’s change is also centered around a key event in his life, having the girl of his dreams overdose. This change leads to him becoming sober and acquiring a job. While Fuckhead does show character development by actually holding down a job and not pawning things for heroin, he himself doesn't feel or see it. In a scene at the Beverly Home Fuckhead is walking around when a man completely loses it because his wife divorced him and Fuckhead’s response is “He was completely and openly a …show more content…
The most innovative thing for me about Jesus’ Son is the fact how it is a book of short stories that ultimately come together as a novel. By the end of it you are able to see the progression of Fuckhead and how he goes through life day by day even if the book does not explain his day to day life. The magic realism also portrayed in this book is innovative with quotes such as “I knew every raindrop by its name.” (1) and “Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.” (96) To be honest I still really don’t know what the raindrop quote even means but it sounds something magical and the image of someone talking to someone else's bullet hole on their check is something magical. The Underground Railroad also embraces this magic realism with having the underground railroad literally being a train that is underground. Colson Whitehead took the metaphor of the underground railroad and decided he wanted it to be a physical reality. Another innovative part of The Underground Railroad is how it portrayed how the times were during slavery. You always learn in school that slavery was bad and slaves were treated awful but I did not know how bad it really was. The scene with Big Anthony being burned alive on day three of torture and no one could hear his screams because on the first they sewn his penis to his mouth put an awful image in my head and anyone else that reads it. The

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