Book Review: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead - Entrepreneur Generations

Why read we read novels? Aren't there enough amazing non-fiction stories in human history?

The answer is obvious to anyone who has ever been dazzled, perplexed, provoked, or moved by a novel, of course. Obvious to feel, but, perhaps, not very easy to explain. Tim O'Brien tried, when he once said that fiction is for "getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth." 

It feels like Colson Whitehead's new masterpiece The Underground Railroad especially applies to this idea. We have all read or heard stories about Harriet Tubman leading slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad. However, this is not a novel about that Underground Railroad; yet, in a way, it is. Whitehead illuminates the horrors of slavery and the plight of those running away from it, but does not adhere to the confines of realism or of historical fiction. Whitehead's main conceit is that, in his novel, the Underground Railroad is not a series of abolitionist churches and homes that secretly helped slaves escape to freedom but, rather, a literal railroad that runs underground. Slaves are led to the stations by helpers, where station managers assist them with food and conversation while waiting for the train to arrive. Then, the train plows through in the darkness under the earth, leading escaped slaves to their next destination.

This underground train is not a daring attempt by Whitehead to reinvent the underground railroad, nor a mere metaphor or a symbol. It just is what it is in this novel, which amid its very gritty and realistic descriptions of plantation life and running through the Georgia swamps to escape, also includes Friday night lynchings as part of a weekly town variety show, a "Freedom Trail" lined with the bloodied bodies of lynched black people and white people who help them, and a museum in which slave life is pantomimed by freed slaves. All plausible but mostly presumably fictive additions to early 19th century American South.

The protagonist here is Cora, a 15-year old slave living on a Georgia plantation with an especially cruel master. When a just-arrived slave named Caesar asks her to escape with him -- Cora thinks it's because her mother escaped five years before, so she's good luck -- she initially refuses, but later reconsiders, and she finds herself running for her life from the plantation. Among the dangers of nighttime travel in a swamp and dense woods, the most significant obstacle are slavecatchers -- especially the legendary Ridgeway, who has never forgiven himself for letting her mother get away. As the novel's primary villain, Ridgeway is a force; his language (which Cora memorably calls out towards the end of the novel, saying something like "Just because you refer to something in a certain way does not make it so") and demeanor are brutal and chilling.

Of course, much of the novel is brutal and chilling. Whitehead describes the graphic horrors of slavery with an unflinching eye, from both the violent and bloody actions of slave owners to events less portrayed in our culture, like the mortality rates of infants in slave quarters or how slaves' mental illness was handled. Cora and Caesar are indomitable and resourceful characters, forced to survive in an abhorrent world, and we root for them with all of our hearts. I listened to the novel, and there were times when I was openly sobbing while driving, feeling for these characters and others that Whitehead crafts.

It works so remarkably well because Whitehead's language is powerful and matter-of-fact. One wouldn't call Whitehead a lyrical writer, I don't think; his goal here seems to be to tell a straightforward slave narrative, which makes his additions of elements of fantasy come off as just the literal truth.

So, yes, The Underground Railroad is a magnificent example of why we read novels. Through the prism of Whitehead's art, we feel anew the United States' birth defect of slavery, the lives that were sacrificed so that lands could be conquered and how a society can be built upon the still-present stain of white supremacy. Whitehead is not a novelist who I have enjoyed before (I couldn't make it through Zone One, and I love zombies), but The Underground Railroad blew me away and left an imprint that will likely stay forever.

Indeed, The Underground Railroad belongs next to Edward P. Jones' The Known World (the novel's shifting time and focus on different characters reminded me of this one in particular) and Toni Morrison's Beloved (one could make interesting comparisons with both authors' use of reality distortions; like Morrison, I think Whitehead would bristle at the term "magical realism") as great American novels that take on the subject of slavery. But I also thought it was so interesting when I read that Whitehead was reading Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow as he wrote this, because it's sadly easy and powerful to trace the lines between the institutional racism described in that text and Whitehead's. There's a part of the novel where a black character, debunking a white character saying their assistance with freeing a slave is breaking the law, says that's "white man's laws", not actual laws. Alexander draws the line between mass incarceration and slavery, and Whitehead fills in some of the story here.

I've taught The Known World before, to IB Juniors for summer reading. Like me, they largely found the novel to be powerful and thought-provoking. But, at 432 pages, it's unwieldy for teaching during the school year, especially since Edward P. Jones is not (yet?) on the IB Prescribed Authors List. I imagine The Underground Railroad will be an easier addition to high school curriculums; at 320 pages and full of adventure, albeit often gruesome and gut-wrenching, it is ripe for teaching, and I think students (10th grade or above) would be engrossed.

Personally, I would love to re-read, and study and teach the novel, to learn more from my students. There seem to be such interesting motifs that Whitehead is exploring -- what is truth? Who gets to form it, who gets to tell the story? It's almost like, what if the underground railroad were really a train? White people in power wrote the history books, not the folks who worked on the train, who wanted to keep each other safe. There are threads of this idea of authenticity throughout the novel: when Cora is in the museum depicting slavery; when she chastises Ridgeway for his attempts to construct the story the way he wants with his language; with the stories told to black women about the eugenic experiements; or with the public lynchings of slaves and sympathetic whites meant as a story of warning to others. There's also a thread of the engine: the engines that drive the trains, the engine of cotton that drives the slave industry, the engine of medical prowess that drives the eugenics experiments. What other ideas is Whitehead grappling with here? There are so many; there are so many opportunities for discussion.

The ending of The Underground Railroad offers some hope, but we have been run through the wringer in this book; there are several heart-stopping scenes and resonating characters with harrowing situations and outcomes. Put all together, this is a novel that tells us a lot about how the United States and its people were formed, and it does so with an engrossing story without sacrificing any art for message. 'Indeed, it is a masterpiece. Colson Whitehead has given us a novel that could stand the test of time and be studied for generations.

Note: I listened to the Audible version of this text, narrated by Bahni Turpin, who was awesome, giving Cora a voice just as tough and pained as the character was.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/2b0G5ur Book Review: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead - Entrepreneur Generations

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