Everyone aboard? Next stop, freedom. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad cleverly interweaves time and space in a fictional network that reinvents the history of the underground railroad, and the pathways to freedom it provided. The historical basis of this novel nevertheless proves to be in an ambiguous relationship with both past and present as it alternates between historical facts, fantasy and more contemporary influences. Time, as it turns out, is not only defined by sunsets and sunrises or the ticking of a clock. It is shaped by the rhythms and patterns of daily life, by modes of transport and communicative networks. In other words, the relationship we have with the present is partially defined by “the technological apparatuses by which the relationships between speed, time and space are determined.” (Boxall, 3) Only when the overwhelming chaos of the present fades into the past can we reconsider the effects a specific time had on our worldview. Cora faces a similar challenge; her worldview is expanded by her escape journey towards freedom, but it is also disrupted by setbacks and surprises, and it seems that the question of freedom can only be answered in hindsight as well.
History is told through certain narratives that outline our conceptions of the past. The Underground Railroad bases itself on these narratives, but interweaves fact and fiction in such a way that it becomes difficult to discern where one blurs into the other. The suspension of disbelief shies away from the manifestation of a literal underground railroad and towards the violence and cruelty that the characters in the novel have to endure.
Whitehead’s novel features a displacement of time and space to create a narrative framework that encourages self-reflection. Both Cora and the reader are invited to think about the conditions of enslaved people once Cora boards the first underground train. At first, she is unable to imagine any form of freedom at all, as “To escape the boundaries of the plantation was to escape the fundamental principles of your existence: impossible.” (8) Three weeks later, she decides she will attempt the impossible. This decision brings her to the Museum of Natural Wonders, where the life of an enslaved person is curated into a Living History exhibition. The narrative form of Living History museums would not become an exhibition practice until the 1990s, but the displacement of this contemporary element in a novel set in the nineteenth century allows Cora to reflect on her own enslaved reality. (Dubey, 113) Cora searches the crowd for a weak link and stares into their eyes until they break under her gaze. Her micro-rebellion towards the visitors of the museum represents her first stage of freedom. She is no longer contained by the violence of the plantation, but she is still shackled down by a similar narrative in the Museum of Living History.
“Cora stared into her eyes, unwavering and fierce, until the woman broke, fairly running from the glass toward the agricultural section.” (125)
Cora resurfaces in a number of states where she interacts with various forms of freedom. Freedom seems to be at her fingertips in a settlement in South Carolina, until she discovers that the bodily autonomy of former enslaved people is being threatened by government-run medical experiments. Whitehead turns to an aesthetic of anachronisms to create a narrative in which skyscrapers, syphilis experiments, and eugenics form an antihistorical setting that is not so antihistorical after all.
“Postrace fiction employs these new forms of fantasy to reverse the usual course of fantasy, turning it away from latent forms of daydream, delusion and denial, toward the manifold surface features of history.” (Saldívar, 594)
Periodization and historical accuracy become a secondary concern in Whitehead’s novel. Rather, this speculative form of historical fiction seems to dispute the utopian idea that we could currently be living in a post-racial society, when the narratives of our past cannot be delinked from our present. (Dischinger, 85) The tales that have been told to justify slavery are forms of delusion and denial as well, but they nevertheless persisted and harmed. The truth of the past lingers in the present, and Sartre’s analogy that we can only understand the chaos of the present in hindsight, looking over our shoulder in a speeding carriage, seems to be present in the novel as well. (Boxall, 2)
“If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America.” (69)
Cora discovers different forms of independence throughout her journey, and her perspective on freedom constantly shifts in hindsight of the events that take place in the novel. The final form of freedom that she discovers is intellectual freedom. Valentine Farm offers Cora a community and an education, which allows her to access stories and ideas previously unavailable to her. The brief respite in this almost utopian community is rudely disrupted by a fire caused by white vigilantes that destroys Valentine Farm and the literary corpus it holds. Once again, Cora is faced with a harsh reality that seizes her individual and intellectual freedom.
“She put miles behind her, put behind her the counterfeit sanctuaries and endless chains, the murder of Valentine farm. There was only the darkness of the tunnel, and somewhere ahead, exit.” (304)
Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad creates a speculative history that opens up an interpretive space in which different forms of freedom are reconsidered in a contemporary novel. Cora’s struggle for freedom remains ambiguous in this narrative as it conflates history and fantasy within the expansive network of the underground railroad. Past and present prove to be inseparable from each other when nation and imagination are tied together in narratives that remember a traumatic past. The question of what it means to be free in the United States can then only be answered in hindsight of a nation that was built on the enslavement of Black people.
Bibliography
Boxall, Peter. Twenty-First-Century Fiction: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Dischinger, Matthew. “States of Possibility in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.” The Global South 11, no. 1 (2017): 82-99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/globalsouth.11.1.05.
Dubey, Madhu. “Speculative Fictions of Slavery.” American Literature 82 no. 4 (2010): 779-805.
Dubey, Madhu. “Museumizing Slavery: Living History in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.” American Literary History 32, no. 1 (2019): 111-139. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/756506.
Saldívar, Ramón. “Historical Fantasy, Speculative Realism, and Postrace Aesthetics in Contemporary American Fiction.” American Literary History 23, no. 3 (2011): 574-599. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41237456.
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: Anchor Books, 2016.
This is an excellent, thought-provoking reading on the notions of time, space, and freedom in Whitehead’s ‘The Underground Railroad’. Your analysis opens a myriad of further readings, particularly on isolation and trauma. Whilst she is working in the museum, I found Cora’s behaviour towards white spectators one of the most striking moments of the text, and your discussion of this “micro-rebellion” as Cora’s “first stage of freedom” provided clarity to said behaviour. Your reading became particularly interesting when it highlighted the museum, rightfully so, as an extension to Cora’s life on the plantation, since she remains shackled, albeit in a different context. The fact that Cora aims a cruel face at a young white girl whose parents she used to work for thoroughly coincides with your reading, with such an act by Cora psychologically liberating her from her not-so-new entrapments. Salvídar’s quote is excellently sourced, summarising several of the key aspects of Whitehead’s text, as you have made clear. The ambiguous themes of daydream, delusion, and denial throughout Whitehead’s piece become evident through your analysis, and through referral to Jean-Paul Sartre’s analogy, you have shown that Whitehead’s text can be interpreted on a deeper philosophical level, thus proving the text’s depth in helping one’s understanding of the African American condition both historically and contemporaneously. With each of your points fresh in mind, I find myself able to mentally elaborate on the relatable prominent theme of black unity and community throughout the text, therefore being a truly rewarding read!
I really enjoyed reading this blog post. I thought your point that the question of freedom can only be answered in hindsight is a very apt lens in which to view events in the novel. This is particularly important in relation to the character of Mabel. Despite Mabel’s absence for the majority of the events of the novel, she is metaphorically present at all times as she represents the freedom that each one of the slaves yearns for. It is her mother’s escape and Cora’s conflicting emotions of pride and anger towards it that propel Cora towards her own continued freedom. In revealing this information to a reader yet concealing it from Cora, Whitehead resists a reader remaining a passive observer to events in the novel. As you said, he encourages a reader towards self-reflection and to remember the horrors of slavery. Also by keeping the news of her mother’s death from Cora, Whitehead keeps alive hope that Cora can “also” escape slavery. At the end of the novel, Cora is free but it is not a conclusive ending; a reader does not know what will happen in the future. Whitehead’s deliberate decision to not tie up the loose ends of the novel means that the reader finishes the novel with a sense of unknown. It resists a “happy” ending of a slave escaping from slavery as this was not the case for so many people. Even the few that did still carried the horrors of their experience with them.
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This blogpost is extremely thought provoking especially your assertion that the ‘question of what it means to be free in the United States can only be answered in hindsight of a nation that was built on the enslavement of Black people.’ Hindsight as the dismantling tool of enslavement reveals a new reading within the novel. In particular, this is an interesting motif to apply to the Living History Museum and I found your commentary insightful on this. The idea that Cora finds microrebellion in this space which historicises her current lived experience is jarring. There is a discomfort in the setting as it seems pre-emptive to place Cora’s story behind a glass wall especially within a novel. However, it is a narrative tool to dismantle and blur notions of time and place. It calls into question our interactions with history, it’s reflectiveness and truthfulness is brought under scrutiny by Whitehead. Hindsight itself may be loaded with prejudices and to truly question what it means to be free Whitehead through this narrative setting emphasises the need to inspect the act of looking back effectively.
I really like your focus on the ‘setbacks’ and contingencies of Cora’s journey and how this disrupts straightforward understandings of time, as is analogised by the direction she moves through the Museum. Your also draw attention – rightly – to the self-consciousness of this move on Whitehead’s behalf. Perhaps there might be scope to think about the implications of this not just in relation to the Underground Railroad map (with its arrows going from south to north) but also with Whitehead’s mode of storytelling in mind? If Whitehead is keen to disrupt the linearity of his narrative, arranged in terms of beginning, middle and end, what are the wider implications for our understanding of history, once it is stripped of the reassurances of resolutions and endings? How might this disruption help us to better understand what is at stake in reimagining Black history through the lens of speculative fiction? For me, Dubey has the most persuasive insights here…
Thank you for your comment and insights. I think that Whitehead’s disruptive storytelling is meant to oppose the idea that race travels through a progressive narrative that will eventually result in a post-racial society. The Underground Railroad distances the reader from ‘traditional’ slave narratives and reintroduces the past with contemporary influences, which demonstrates that the two cannot be isolated from each other. The past lives on in the present and continues to influence structures of domination that are based on racial ideologies. The open ending of the novel illustrates that there is no clearly demarcated end to racism. Whitehead seems to argue that racism is still travelling, we have not reached the end station of a post-racial society, and nor should we want to. There is no linear line to the resolution of racism and the need for change has not been resolved.
This is a really interesting post on Whitehead’s ‘The Underground Railroad’ in which you explore how ideas of time and the present can be subverted. I think you have set up an interesting discussion regarding Whitehead’s use of speculative fiction to discuss historical events and how this opens up possibilities for discussions of time itself. You rightly point out various moments of Cora’s ‘almost’ freedom and how each time it is hindered or destroyed by some form of set-back which distorts the sense of time. You rightly point out that the concept of the ‘present’ is defined by influences of speed, time, and space. Applying this to Whitehead’s novel where the sense of historical timing is distorted makes the focus of this novel increasingly contemporary or ‘present’, I think Whitehead alters history to shape the sense of the ‘present’ and assert the importance of these aspects of history within our present.
This post provides a very unique and interesting angle to consider when thinking about time in Whitehead’s novel. How it shows up in a mix of varying forms, from the Living History Museum to the town of skyscrapers and deranged medical experiments. I found your passage on the settlement in South Carolina particularly inspiring as it led me to consider why Whitehead would implement such odd and almost futuristic buildings to the story. As you point out so well, the narrative he creates “form an antihistorical setting that is not so antihistorical after all.” In this way, you’ve opened my eyes to how Whitehead is providing a deep critique of the notion that our modern world believes it is beyond racism, that we have learned and evolved from the period of slavery and disgraceful maltreatment of people of colour. That Cora can seemingly be a person that exists both at a point of slavery but also a person amidst skyscrapers and dystopian-like and racially fuelled medical experiments proves that nothing has changed, and that the past will forever be in the present and the present will always be in the past. Thus, Cora will forever be a person that can exist in both realms before actual change is made.
I really enjoyed reading your interesting blog post. In particular I liked your closing idea that the novel “opens up an interpretative space in which different forms of freedom are reconsidered”. I think the conclusion of the novel perhaps best demonstrates this. Cora remarks that “Perhaps she wasn’t in America anymore but had pushed beyond it”. In this sense, as you say, Whitehead reinterprets and reimagines historical and geographical modes of knowing to consider different avenues or pathways to freedom.
I found the quote you used that “Postrace fiction employs these new forms of fantasy” to be very interesting to contemplate – when reading The Underground Railroad, as you said, there is a blur between fiction and reality, but one that feels strange in that it feels so incredibly grounded it’s hard to disseminate what is real and fiction. I think this speculative fiction aspect of the novel is so interesting – there is a sense of our world here, but something is just so slightly off that it feels strange. I think the literal manifestation of the Underground Railroad is a genius way to blur this fact and fiction – irrespective of whether it was a literal railroad or not, it still serves the same purpose in the narrative. I find this a unique way of creating a narrative, in some effects mythologizing narratives of slavery so that they become akin to folk tales important to people. In class, I thought this blurring of fact and fiction was a little strange and underwhelming, but through your post, I feel that there is some importance in these actions within the contemporary.