The Underground Railroad Sparknotes

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, was published in 2016. The genre of this novel is historical fiction, focusing on the suffering of black people during the Pre-Civil war era. Slavery existed from the beginning of the 17th century until it was abolished in 1865. The novel tells the story of a young girl, a teenager named Cora, that is born into slavery. Her goal is to escape through the underground railroads to get to the northern free states. Cora after being raped and abandoned by her mother, that had run away, realized she must also try to run. On her journey she sees horrible things, such as, a long row of black corpses strung up in trees, she also has people that help her that are tortured and killed. The author …show more content…
Life was horrible for Cora being an outcast among her fellow Africans, and a slave. She decided to try to escape after being asked several times by her friend Caesar, Knowing it was a huge risk, if found, they would be tortured while on display for others to see and possibly killed. For the entirety of her journey she was being chased by a slave catcher and others. She endured terrible things along the way, the Freedom Trail, where tortured black corpses hang from a trail of trees. (p.153) This is where she ended up when she got off the train, and she thought,,”In what sort of hell had the train left her off.” (p.153) Throughout the novel Cora does many heroic things, one example is when the slave catcher was about to beat a slave she laid her body over him and took the beatings for him. (p.34) Not only was Cora heroic she had a drive to never give up, toward the end of the book when she had been captured by Ridgeway she was able to grab him as they tumbled down the tunnel together. He was unable to move, while she got up and jumped on the underground train car and “pumped and pumped, and rolled out of the light. Into the tunnel no one had made, that led nowhere.” …show more content…
He was evil and ruthless determined to hunt down Cora and destroy anyone that tried to help her. Ridgeway was determined to find Cora, because he was unable to find her mother long ago. (p.301) He also would stop at nothing to track down abolitionists. “He ran them down as if they were rabbits and then his fists subdued them.” (p.76) “Ridgeway would break into homes and kidnap them years after they thought they were free along with their families, he would drag them from the north and back to the south for auction.” (p.78) Toward the ending of the novel Ridgeway finds Cora living at a house on the Valentines farm. The ruthless slave catcher shot the men that were helping Cora, and burned their farm down. Ridgeways men, which were, “the white men outside whooped and howled over the carnage.”(p.287) Then carried Cora away as she screamed and kicked. (p.288) I do not think their is a human meaner than Ridgeway, Whitehead made the reader hate