1|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD – Colson Whitehead

SUMMARY

The Underground Railroad tells the story of Cora, a teenager who runs away from the
Georgia plantation where she and her family have been slaves for three generations.
Cora’s grandmother Ajarry was brought to the United States from Africa on a slave ship
and died after decades working in the fields of the Randall plantation. Cora’s mother,
Mabel, ran away, abandoning Cora, and everywhere she goes, Cora looks for answers
about her mother’s fate. Left without her mother to protect her, Cora is mistreated by the
other slaves, although she shows her fierce nature, challenging a slave named Blake who
tries to take her garden plot, and protecting a young slave from the cruel master Terrance.
Finally, she escapes with another slave, Caesar. They make it to a stop on the underground
railroad, but not before some locals try to capture them and Cora kills a teenage white
boy in order to get away.
The underground railroad, in this novel, is an actual railroad with stations below farms
and houses. The first train takes Cora and Caesar to South Carolina, where they are able
to live more like free people. The move from Georgia to South Carolina sets the pattern
of telling a series of stories about Black experience not just during slavery but throughout
American history.

In South Carolina, Cora and Caesar are met by Sam, a cheerful white station agent who
will be their contact during their stay and assigns them new identities. Here, Cora and
Caesar are housed, fed, and given jobs. Life is so much better than on the plantation, they
are able to ignore things that don’t seem fair. After working as a maid, Cora is sent to
work as a “type” in a museum that puts forward a very false, positive version of African
and slave life. One night, Cora and Caesar learn from Sam that the hospital they thought
was helping them with free medical care is actually conducting government experiments
to kill off and sterilize Black people. Then they learn that the slave catcher, Ridgeway, has
arrived in search of them. Cora escapes to the underground railroad platform, but Caesar
is left behind, and Sam’s house is burned to the ground.

Cora’s next stop is North Carolina, where the situation for Black people, free or fugitive, is
much worse. Cora is taken to the home of the reluctant station agent Martin Wells and
his wife Edith, who is very upset by Cora’s presence. Cora lives in a small hiding space in
the Wells’ attic, where she sees a horrible spectacle take place every Friday night on the
town square. North Carolina has worked to expel or kill all Black people in the state, and
Friday Festivals are a weekly display of racist propaganda ending with the hanging of a
Black person, a grisly act in which the whole town participates. As time goes by, Cora
improves her reading in the attic room, but there is no way out for her. Finally, Cora falls
ill and has to be cared for in the Wells’ home. Their maid Fiona informs on them, and that
Friday night a group of night riders searches the house, finding Cora. With the patrollers
2|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

is the slave catcher, Ridgeway, who chains Cora to his wagon and takes her with him, while
Edith and Martin Wells are hanged from the oak tree.

Tennessee is even worse than North Carolina. Cora is taken through the state by Ridgeway
and his two companions, a violent man named Boseman who wears a necklace of human
ears, and an odd Black boy named Homer. They also have picked up a runaway named
Jasper who constantly sings hymns. The first half of Tennessee they travel through is
completely blackened by wildfires. Even the white settlers have been displaced. Halfway
into their journey, annoyed by his singing, Ridgeway shoots Jasper in the face. They drive
out of the fires, but the next series of towns are in quarantine due to a yellow fever
outbreak. Finally, they stop in a town where Cora is acknowledged by a young Black man
wearing glasses. After Ridgeway takes Cora to dinner and tells her about Caesar’s death,
they stop for the night in the woods outside of town. Boseman tries to rape Cora and
Ridgeway punches him. At that instant, the man wearing glasses appears with two others,
all armed. One shoots Boseman, another chases Homer, and the man with glasses fights
with Ridgeway. Cora jumps on Ridgeway’s back and they subdue him. Homer gets away,
Ridgeway is chained to his own wagon, and Cora is rescued.

The man with glasses is Royal, a conductor on the underground railroad, who takes Cora
to Valentine farm in Indiana. There she truly lives as a free woman, attending school and
contributing to the life of the large farm occupied by free and escaped Black people. She
and Royal begin a romance, and she also becomes close to her housemate Sybil and
Sybil’s daughter, Molly. Valentine farm was founded by a light-skinned Black man named
John Valentine, who often passed for white, and his wife Gloria. Every Saturday night on
the farm there is a big feast followed by lectures, poetry readings, singing, and dancing.
However, hostility from the nearby white community is growing as the whites feel
threatened by the size of the Black community.

Royal takes Cora on a buggy ride and picnic and shows her an abandoned house with an
underground railroad station beneath it. It is too small for an actual train and just has a
handcar and a narrow tunnel. No one knows where it goes. The experience makes Cora
uneasy, since she wants to settle on the Valentine farm and not be forced to flee on the
underground railroad anymore. Sam appears on Valentine farm on his way to California
and tells Cora that Terrance Randall is dead and no one is looking for her anymore.

On the night that two speakers, Mingo and Lander, debate the future of Valentine farm,
a white mob arrives, killing Lander and Royal and many others. They burn down the
buildings while the residents flee. Later, people will only know about the farm and the
massacre because survivors tell the story to their descendants. Cora is captured by
Ridgeway and Homer, who order her to take them to the underground railroad station.
3|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

Before the book ends, we learn that Cora’s mother Mabel never made it farther than the
swamp bordering the Randall plantation. As she was returning to take care of Cora, she
was bitten by a poisonous snake and her body sunk into the swamp.

Cora takes Ridgeway to the abandoned railroad station, where she pulls him down the
steps and he is mortally wounded. Homer tends to Ridgeway while Cora pumps the
handcar down the tunnel. She travels for miles, then walks until she emerges into daylight.
On the trail, she encounters three covered wagons, the last one driven by an older Black
man named Ollie. He feeds her and tells her he is going to St. Louis to join a wagon train
to California. She joins him and wonders about his story, which he will certainly tell her on
the way.

ANALYSIS

The Underground Railroad is the story of Cora’s journey from slavery on a Georgia
plantation to freedom in the North. Her route takes her across the country, with stops in
South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana before she makes her final escape
into an unnamed place in the free North. Whitehead mixes elements of magical realism
and science fiction into the novel, such that the places Cora visits contain elements of
other places and times in American history. Her journey includes eugenics and other
twentieth-century examples of social control in South Carolina, brutal racial exclusion laws
in North Carolina, large-scale environmental destruction in Tennessee and an intentional
community in Indiana. Whitehead makes the underground railroad a literal railroad in this
book, with locomotives pulling cars Cora rides between states. In addition to the dangers
she faces in the places she visits, Cora has an antagonist in the form of Ridgeway, the
slave catcher who pursues her throughout her journey. Their conflict drives the story, as
he chases her from state to state.
Ridgeway represents the forces of the American imperative. He defines his role as
maintaining the order of white supremacy to allow the economic expansion driven by
cotton production. He chases Cora not because he hates her but because she and other
enslaved Black people are necessary tools in his view, who grow the crop that dominates
the world economy and therefore serve the manifest destiny of the United States. This
view requires dismissing the suffering of Black people as irrelevant and the hypocrisy of a
nation taking pride in its belief in the rights of individuals while maintaining a system of
forced labor. Cora’s fierce independence and determination stands in opposition to
Ridgeway’s philosophy. Their conflict is fueled by her refusal to accept his vision of
America, which defines her as an object rather than a person with rights of self-
determination. Throughout the book, she struggles against forces that seek to control
her.
4|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

Once Ridgeway is chasing Cora, the conflict between them as protagonist and antagonist
is set in motion and must lead to their final battle. During her initial escape from the
Georgia plantation, Cora, Caesar, and Lovey fight a group of hog hunters who seek to
capture them. In the struggle, Cora injures a boy who later dies of his wounds, and this
death marks her as a murderer. That murder and her escape from Georgia via the
Underground Railroad lead to Ridgeway’s hunt for her. From the moment Cora leaves the
plantation, she has committed to escaping or dying, since she knows from the example
of Big Anthony that Terrance Randall will torture and kill any enslaved person caught after
an attempted escape. Ridgeway chases her into South Carolina, leading to her desperate
run for North Carolina. Although Cora successfully hides for months in Martin Wells’s attic,
Ridgeway captures her in North Carolina. He takes her to Tennessee as part of his journey
to Missouri to capture a different escapee, but in Tennessee, Royal rescues Cora. He brings
her to Valentine farm in Indiana, where she intends to join the community, before the
farm is betrayed and Ridgeway captures her again.

Cora’s conflict with Ridgeway culminates in their fight at the ghost tunnel. Ridgeway has
forced Cora to show him the tunnel because he has a vendetta against the Underground
Railroad. Cora, like all those who ride the railroad, tries to keep it secret, but threatened
with Ridgeway’s pistol, she chooses her own survival over secrecy. Ridgeway, ecstatic,
believes this will be the beginning of his destruction of the whole system. However, Cora
attacks him. She, Ridgeway and Homer struggle in the station until, injured, Cora is able
to make it to the handcar on the tracks and escape. While she pumps the handcar,
Ridgeway lies dying, still philosophizing about the American imperative while Homer
takes notes. By escaping through the tunnel, Cora is also digging it, answering the
question she has asked throughout the book about how the system was built. In
Whitehead’s magical realism, the tunnels are dug by the people escaping, each one
leaving a path behind for others to follow in the future.

Cora’s journey is a mental escape from slavery in addition to a physical one. At each stop
in her travels, she grows stronger and freer. In South Carolina, she begins to learn to read
and at the same time rejects the attempts by doctors to control her body and steal her
future by sterilizing her. In North Carolina, she reads almanacs that allow her to dream of
a bigger world and a future she has not imagined. In Indiana, she encounters a community
so safe she begins to trust others, witnessing Sibyl and Molly as a healing example of love
between a mother and child and allowing Royal to court her. In Indiana, she sees a vision
of freedom she never imagined. Her trip through the ghost tunnel requires all the strength
she has in her, but in the tunnel, she is digging, she feels the shape of a different America
than the one she has known. When she climbs into Ollie’s wagon in the North, she
wonders how long it has taken him to put his own enslavement behind him, an indication
that she believes she will be able to do the same.
5|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

CHARACTERS

CORA

The Underground Railroad is the story of Cora’s journey from slavery on a Georgia
plantation to freedom in the North. Her route takes her across the country, with stops in
South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana before she makes her final escape
into an unnamed place in the free North. Whitehead mixes elements of magical realism
and science fiction into the novel, such that the places Cora visits contain elements of
other places and times in American history. Her journey includes eugenics and other
twentieth-century examples of social control in South Carolina, brutal racial exclusion laws
in North Carolina, large-scale environmental destruction in Tennessee and an intentional
community in Indiana. Whitehead makes the underground railroad a literal railroad in this
book, with locomotives pulling cars Cora rides between states. In addition to the dangers
she faces in the places she visits, Cora has an antagonist in the form of Ridgeway, the
slave catcher who pursues her throughout her journey. Their conflict drives the story, as
he chases her from state to state.
Ridgeway represents the forces of the American imperative. He defines his role as
maintaining the order of white supremacy to allow the economic expansion driven by
cotton production. He chases Cora not because he hates her but because she and other
enslaved Black people are necessary tools in his view, who grow the crop that dominates
the world economy and therefore serve the manifest destiny of the United States. This
view requires dismissing the suffering of Black people as irrelevant and the hypocrisy of a
nation taking pride in its belief in the rights of individuals while maintaining a system of
forced labor. Cora’s fierce independence and determination stands in opposition to
Ridgeway’s philosophy. Their conflict is fueled by her refusal to accept his vision of
America, which defines her as an object rather than a person with rights of self-
determination. Throughout the book, she struggles against forces that seek to control
her.

Once Ridgeway is chasing Cora, the conflict between them as protagonist and antagonist
is set in motion and must lead to their final battle. During her initial escape from the
Georgia plantation, Cora, Caesar, and Lovey fight a group of hog hunters who seek to
capture them. In the struggle, Cora injures a boy who later dies of his wounds, and this
death marks her as a murderer. That murder and her escape from Georgia via the
Underground Railroad lead to Ridgeway’s hunt for her. From the moment Cora leaves the
plantation, she has committed to escaping or dying, since she knows from the example
of Big Anthony that Terrance Randall will torture and kill any enslaved person caught after
an attempted escape. Ridgeway chases her into South Carolina, leading to her desperate
run for North Carolina. Although Cora successfully hides for months in Martin Wells’s attic,
Ridgeway captures her in North Carolina. He takes her to Tennessee as part of his journey
to Missouri to capture a different escapee, but in Tennessee, Royal rescues Cora. He brings
6|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

her to Valentine farm in Indiana, where she intends to join the community, before the
farm is betrayed and Ridgeway captures her again.

Cora’s conflict with Ridgeway culminates in their fight at the ghost tunnel. Ridgeway has
forced Cora to show him the tunnel because he has a vendetta against the Underground
Railroad. Cora, like all those who ride the railroad, tries to keep it secret, but threatened
with Ridgeway’s pistol, she chooses her own survival over secrecy. Ridgeway, ecstatic,
believes this will be the beginning of his destruction of the whole system. However, Cora
attacks him. She, Ridgeway and Homer struggle in the station until, injured, Cora is able
to make it to the handcar on the tracks and escape. While she pumps the handcar,
Ridgeway lies dying, still philosophizing about the American imperative while Homer
takes notes. By escaping through the tunnel, Cora is also digging it, answering the
question she has asked throughout the book about how the system was built. In
Whitehead’s magical realism, the tunnels are dug by the people escaping, each one
leaving a path behind for others to follow in the future.

Cora’s journey is a mental escape from slavery in addition to a physical one. At each stop
in her travels, she grows stronger and freer. In South Carolina, she begins to learn to read
and at the same time rejects the attempts by doctors to control her body and steal her
future by sterilizing her. In North Carolina, she reads almanacs that allow her to dream of
a bigger world and a future she has not imagined. In Indiana, she encounters a community
so safe she begins to trust others, witnessing Sibyl and Molly as a healing example of love
between a mother and child and allowing Royal to court her. In Indiana, she sees a vision
of freedom she never imagined. Her trip through the ghost tunnel requires all the strength
she has in her, but in the tunnel, she is digging, she feels the shape of a different America
than the one she has known. When she climbs into Ollie’s wagon in the North, she
wonders how long it has taken him to put his own enslavement behind him, an indication
that she believes she will be able to do the same.

CAESAR

Through Caesar, Cora’s companion for the first portion of the novel, Whitehead
demonstrates how slavery and the legal systems that supported it destroy people
regardless of how smart and careful they are. Unlike most of the enslaved people on the
Randall plantation, Caesar lived the first part of his life in circumstances that encouraged
his intellectual development. Mrs. Garner, who enslaved him and his parents, preferred to
let them run the house and farm nearly as their own, promising them freedom at her
death. Although her false promise ruins his family’s life when they are separated and sold
south after her death, growing up with the expectation of future freedom gives him the
boldness necessary to attempt escaping Randall, and his literacy and skill at woodworking
connects him to Fletcher and therefore to the Underground Railroad.
7|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

Caesar is constantly learning new things. While other enslaved people at Randall use the
abandoned schoolhouse primarily to meet lovers, Caesar uses it for learning, coming there
to read the copy of Gulliver’s Travels he has insisted Fletcher give him, regardless of the
fatal danger of an enslaved person being caught reading. For Caesar, reading is a form of
freedom. He learns from the book, noting Gulliver’s “guile and pluck” and also his error
of forgetting what he has. Caesar learns from the other enslaved people at Randall as well.
He chooses Cora for a traveling companion based on what he has learned about her
character and her mother’s escape. The knowledge he gains from the hunters allows him
to lead Cora and Lovey safely through the swamp. In South Carolina, he adjusts easily to
a new life. However, Caesar’s courage, intelligence and determination are no match for
the power of slavery. He is worthy of freedom and prepared to seize it, but ultimately, he
cannot escape a system built to keep him in bondage until death. Whitehead uses his
story to demonstrate the near impossibility of attaining freedom, even for someone like
Caesar, who seems well equipped to succeed.

ARNOLD RIDGEWAY

Ridgeway is the principal antagonist of the novel. A renowned slave catcher, he represents
the power, cruelty and almost inescapable reach of slavery. In his youth, Ridgeway
struggles to find purpose. His blacksmith father worships iron, taking it as his life’s work
to transform molten metal into useful tools. His father believes Ridgeway must find for
himself the “Great Spirit” that will drive his working life, an expectation Ridgeway finds
burdensome, as he sees no model for the kind of man he wishes to be. While his size and
strength make him a natural recruit for hunting fugitive slaves, he cannot admire the way
others use the job as an excuse for random violence. Chandler provides a useful example
of a man who uses his body for the work rather than relying on guns, but even he indulges
in stealing moonshine on raids in the backwoods. Although Ridgeway resents his father’s
world view, he, too, is searching for a sense that his work uses his spirit and capabilities
fully.

Expanding his work to tracking runaways into the free states of the North gives Ridgeway
the fulfillment he has been seeking. The legal and practical difficulties of the work engage
his mind as the physical chase has engaged his body. The boots and coat he buys for
himself bring satisfaction stolen whiskey does not, because he now sees himself as serving
not just cotton, reclaiming human tools for cotton production as his father forges iron
ones, but the whole “American imperative” of “property remaining property.” Ridgeway
sees himself as defending not racism but the morality of ownership. Unlike other
slavecatchers, he does not kidnap free Black people, pretending they are enslaved for the
sake of reward money. After he buys Homer, he immediately frees him. When Ridgeway
finds his sense of purpose, Whitehead uses an extended metaphor of iron forging to
describe his role. He is not a smith like his father, making tools and maintaining order. He
is instead “the heat,” the power that melts the iron. Ridgeway’s single-minded focus on
8|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

tracking down particular people on the run becomes an obsession, driving him beyond
the promise of reward money, even to his own death.

THEMES

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Psychic Damage of Slavery

In addition to showing the physical brutality of slavery, Whitehead develops a theme of
the lasting psychic damage to enslaved people. Ajarry’s kidnapping and repeated sale
leaves her believing enslavement and the plantation represent the “fundamental
principles” of her life. In South Carolina and beyond, Cora consciously works to force
thoughts of the plantation from her mind, which she cannot achieve completely. Homer
provides a particularly striking example of this theme. Although Ridgeway frees him as
soon as he buys him, Homer carries on serving him as if he were enslaved, even going so
far as to shackle himself to the wagon every night. Whitehead presents him as a caricature
in order to show that slavery has left him without the ability to imagine a different life for
himself. Homer provides a more exaggerated version of the same damage Mingo suffers
from. Mingo is proud to be free, but he disdains Black people who could not buy their
freedom or who he thinks attract white disapproval. His body may no longer be enslaved,
but slavery has left him unable to feel solidarity with other Black people. Although they
are free, both he and Homer ally themselves with white power structures that support
slavery. This shows the lasting damage of the institution of slavery.

The Connection between Literacy and Freedom

Throughout the novel, Whitehead explores the connection between literacy and freedom.
In the novel as in American history, enslaved people are barred from learning to read, by
law or by owners and overseers. On the Randall plantation, Connelly blinds Jacob for
attempting to learn. In South Carolina, Miss Handler tells her students that North Carolina
state law would fine her and whip the students, in addition to likely punishments from a
master. As with the practice of separating kidnapped Africans from others who speak their
language, literacy is outlawed in order to make it harder for enslaved people to
communicate with each other and therefore harder for them to organize revolts. Literacy
is a particularly powerful organizing tool, since it allows people to share ideas across
distances, without needing to be in the same place at the same time. Preventing enslaved
people from reading and writing is an important aspect of control of the enslaved
population, a source of great concern for whites throughout the book. A teamster at
Valentine farm notes that his former master said a literate Black person was more
dangerous than an armed one and compares the library there to a pile of gunpowder.

Because literacy is such a powerful and forbidden tool, throughout the book, Black people
value it highly. Caesar takes the risk of hiding a book at Randall because reading lets him
9|The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

feel mental freedom. Cora feels “nourished” by the opportunity to learn to read in South
Carolina and believes it would make her mother proud, since it is part of pushing
plantation life away from herself, creating a free identity. In the confinement of the North
Carolina attic, almanacs allow her to imagine a future life where she will use their practical
advice. Those almanacs have another association with freedom, in that Martin’s father
used them to keep track of the cycles of the moon for the sake of helping those escaping
slavery. The people of Valentine farm value reading so highly that they build a library, a
daring temple to literacy and freedom. When the mob burns it, Cora’s first instinct is to
run toward it. Literacy and freedom are deeply connected in the novel.

The Power of Community

During Cora’s journey across the country, Whitehead shows examples of different ways
people live together, developing a theme of the power of community. At the Randall
plantation, Connelly and the Randalls work to prevent the enslaved people from forming
a strong community. Selective punishment and small extensions of power turn people
against each other. Moses becomes mean after Connelly makes him his eyes and ears.
Scarce resources cause Ava and others jealous of Cora’s plot to turn against her after
Mabel runs away. In South Carolina, Cora sees the fear white people have of Black people
forming communities. South Carolina uses medical experiments and forces sterilization to
attempt to lower the population, while North Carolina forces them from the state and kills
those who remain. Valentine farm in Indiana shows her how a community built on
freedom and mutual uplift can create a place so strong it begins to heal the wounds of
slavery, giving children space to thrive and families a chance to love each other without
fear of forced separation. Valentine offers a model of the power of a community to create
possibility.

MOTIFS

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the text’s major themes.

Festivals
Whitehead uses a motif of festivals to reveal the rules and character of the places Cora
lives. The regular festival of the Randall plantation is Jockey’s birthday. It occurs irregularly,
since Jockey does not know his birthdate, reflecting how slavery takes aspects of the
identities of the enslaved from them. While the occasion brings joy, it is also dangerous.
Even in celebration, the enslaved people are at the mercy of the Randalls, who have
Chester and Cora beaten. The other plantation festival is the grotesque party Terrance
holds while torturing and killing Big Anthony, showing the absolute power and cruelty he
enjoys. In North Carolina, Friday Festivals emphasize the rules of white supremacy, with
speeches, plays in blackface, and public hangings of Black people and those who try to
help them. Valentine farm hosts regular gatherings to build community. The shucking bee
10 | T h e U n d e r g r o u n d R a i l r o a d – C o l s o n W h i t e h e a d

and the Saturday suppers are joyful and industrious. As at Jockey’s birthday, there is music
and dancing, but at Valentine, Cora is free to leave. However, even Valentine farm is not
freedom, and its final Saturday gathering ends in death and destruction, as a white mob
descends upon them.

Underground Railroad Stations

The Underground Railroad stations Cora encounters throughout the novel vary to reflect
the circumstances of her travels. The barn above the station in Georgia is hung with iron
shackles, symbolizing the physical bondage of plantation life. The South Carolina station,
with its simple table and chairs and basket of food, fits in with the regulated life of Black
people in South Carolina. The station she comes to in North Carolina is an abandoned
wreck. The condition of the station mirrors the history of its station agents. When Donald
Wells was alive, the station was busy, but Martin is too frightened to want to be part of
its work. The station in Tennessee puts the others to shame, just as the prosperity and
comfort of Valentine farm come as a shock to Cora. In Indiana, Royal brings Cora to the
tunnel that will ultimately bring her to freedom. The ghost tunnel has no platform and is
only big enough to admit a handcar. Throughout the novel, engineers tell Cora the
railroad was built by the same people who build everything in America: Black people. In
Cora’s escape, she becomes the builder of the line leaving Indiana, digging the tunnel
with every push of the handcar lever.

Cotton
Cotton, the most important export crop in the slave states, is a powerful force in the novel.
Whitehead often compares fields of cotton to the ocean. Ajarry dies with the cotton bolls
around her like whitecaps on a rough ocean. Old Randall replaces his indigo with cotton
and expands the plantation after a dream of a “white sea.” These metaphors reflect the
global nature of the cotton trade, where enslaved people raise the drop for the
consumption of Europe. His use of the name King Cotton refers to the economic power
and the power of cotton plantation owners to create laws ensuring enslaved labor to grow
it. Working the cotton fields is arduous and destructive to the body. When Cora first
encounters a dress of machine-woven cotton, in South Carolina, she is shocked and
thrilled by the contrast of the soft cloth, noting that cotton “went in one way, came out
another.” The luxury of cotton good stands in stark contrast to the labor that produces
them.

SYMBOLS

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Swamp
The swamp bordering the Randall plantation represents the possibilities and dangers of
escape. The swamp can hide the fugitives but also harm them. It is a kind of no-man’s
11 | T h e U n d e r g r o u n d R a i l r o a d – C o l s o n W h i t e h e a d

land. After Mabel escapes and cannot be recaptured, Randall has a spell put on the
boundary to keep Black people from entering the swamp. Hiring a witch woman to do
this work indicates that he knows he does not actually control the boundary. Indeed,
enslaved people continue to enter the swamp to hunt and fish. It is a valuable source of
resources for them, including food and moss to sell. However, even as they enter the
swamp for those purposes, they feel “invisible chains” pulling them back to the plantation.
The swamp is not freedom, but a place of possibility. When Cora, Caesar, and Lovey travel
the swamp, Caesar’s knowledge guides them to firmer ground and the swamp itself
shields them from discovery. However, although Mabel can also navigate the swamp,
knowledge cannot fully protect her from its unknown dangers, and a snake bites and kills
her. The swamp itself swallows her, leaving her disappearance a mystery to enrage the
white men and give hope to the enslaved people of Randall.

Almanacs
Almanacs represent Cora’s hope for a self-sufficient future. Cora discovers almanacs while
trapped in Martin’s attic, wholly dependent on him for her safety and every physical need,
from eating to emptying the chamber pot. Almanacs bring her comfort because they list
phenomena that take place without human assistance. Almanacs allow her to imagine a
life where she can use their practical advice. They allow her to dream of places and things
she has never heard of. When Ethel cares for her as she recovers from illness, she requests
the almanacs instead of the Bible, in part because they do not require others to explain
them, avoiding the arguments they have had over the Bible. Whitehead elevates the
almanacs to a spiritual plane, referring to their charts of the phases of the moon as
“prayers for runaways,” since the full moon provides light for escapes. By the time Royal
presents her with a current one, they are so important to her that just seeing the coming
year on the cover allows her to hope for the future. When she emerges from the tunnel
in the North, she draws on what she has learned from them, identifying the cold water as
snowmelt.

Garden Plot
The garden plot Cora inherits from Ajarry and Mabel represents independence and
stability. Ajarry begins planting there soon after she arrives on the plantation. Loss and
instability have marked her life since she was kidnapped, as she has been taken from her
home and traded many times. By establishing her plot, she creates a means to feed herself
beyond rations and a place she can own. She defends the plot fiercely because as an
enslaved person, she has rare opportunities for independence. Ajarry passes the plot
down to Mabel, and Mabel to Cora. In this way, the plot represents an inheritance that
connects them and gives stability to their lives, even as the plantation changes. For these
reasons, Cora in turn risks her life to take the plot back from Blake. For her, as for Ajarry
and Mabel, the plot is “the most valuable land in all of Georgia.”