The Underground Railroad

Cora is an indomitably strong yet vulnerable character. Despite the mighty difficulties that she fights her way through, she is but human. Whitehead therefore imbues his protagonist with a great measure of realism. In so doing, he literally puts a human face on the institution of American enslavement. Cora is also a narrative vehicle for Whitehead’s tour of America. Through Cora’s travels, we see the true nature of America laid bare, in all its complexity, brutality, and hypocrisy. The reader is compelled by Cora’s intricacy and her strength, and through her eyes, we are initiated into the horrific underbelly of the American dream, which lies beneath the nation’s mythology.

Ridgeway, as Cora’s primary antagonist, can be understood as a stand-in for America itself. By the transitive property, it is America that is Cora’s true adversary. Through this gambit, Whitehead subverts popular beliefs about the foundations of the American nation. In his view, America is not defined by the positive aspects of progress, liberty, justice, and freedom—but by the venal and base violence of white supremacy. Ridgeway is assertively honest about his allegiance to an America that is brutal, duplicitous, selfish, vain, and entirely self-interested: A society built by and for the white man exclusively.