General Questions:
Who or what are important symbols and/or allusions in the novel?
How do they function or what is their purpose?
Interview Quotes:
Who or what are important symbols and/or allusions in the novel?
How do they function or what is their purpose?
Interview Quotes:
1. In his interview with NPR (see link to the right), Whitehead says, "So I kept thinking about it. And I thought, well, what if every state our hero went through - as he or she ran North - was a different state of American possibility? So Georgia has one sort of take on America and North Carolina - sort of like Gulliver's Travels. The book is rebooting every time the person goes to a different state].
How is Gulliver's Travels similar to the novel? Why might Whitehead use a popular book from the 1700s as a model for his book?
How is Gulliver's Travels similar to the novel? Why might Whitehead use a popular book from the 1700s as a model for his book?
6 comments:
Almanacs are present towards the end of the novel and can be seen as a symbol of possibilities for Cora. She is learning to read and almanacs contain possibilities for the future, just as running away from the plantation opens new possibilities for Cora. As such, “she devoured them all,” (Whitehead 279) and, although some were old, cherished the possibilities they presented. Before escaping she there was almost no possibilities for Cora other than suffering and death, which was a time she was forbidden from reading, but once she escaped she was able to read and had many more possibilities.
The allusion to the Declaration of Independence is ironic given the circumstances. Michael, a slave, learned how to recite the Declaration of Independence, something that states everyone deserves freedom, which slaves aren’t given. Moreover, his ability to recite one of the most important American documents “never amounted to more than a parlour trick,” (Whitehead 32). Michael could have been taught anything to say, such as a Shakespearean monologue, but is taught one about freedom as a right, despite not having freedom. Additionally it devalues the Declaration of Independence because the guests don’t seem to value the message it holds, despite being important to the founding of the country. This reveals the hypocrisy of society at the time for valuing freedom while still denying basic rights to a group of people simply because of their skin color.
Gulliver’s Travels is similar to the novel because each new setting in the novel contains a world of different possibilities that have distinct stories contained within each of them, but are connected and part of one larger narrative. Additionally in the story Cora is called “‘the Adventuress,’” (Whitehead 279), just as Gulliver went on adventures in his stories. Whitehead likely used a popular book from the 1700’s as a model for his because that was the time America gained its independence and freedom for England, but still allowed slavery, a violation of a person’s freedom. Also, the novel takes place after Gulliver’s Travels was published, so the diary-esque style is ironic. Considering Cora would not have read that book as a slave, or implies it was written after she was free and is a reflection of her escape attempt.
One important symbol in the novel is the underground railroad. Even though there was no actual railroad during the antebellum era that slaves escaped through, it symbolizes their path to freedom in Whitehead’s novel. When Cora and Caesar first embark on their journey on the railroad, Lumbly tells them, “‘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’”(71). Cora follows Lumbly’s instructions, but all she saw as she looked outside was darkness. This is symbolic because during this time, there was little to no hope for African Americans to have complete freedom due to slavery. However, in the story the railroad symbolizes the journey and hope for freedom. Another important symbol in the story is Cora’s garden. The garden was inherited from Ajarry to Maybel to Cora and symbolizes Cora herself and her freedom. In the beginning of the story, a man named Blake tries to use Cora’s garden plot for a house for his dog. Cora knocks down the house with a hatchet and claims her garden back (21). This is symbolic of her freedom because she does whatever it takes to fight for it and perseveres through numerous hardships. She refuses to let anyone take her freedom away and protects it fearlessly, as she did her garden.
Gulliver’s Travels is similar to the novel because in both stories, the main characters embark on a journey and their struggles grow to be more difficult as their adventure progresses. Both Cora and Gulliver become wiser and stronger along their journey. I think Whitehead used this book as a model for his own to create a sense of irony. One of the main themes brought up in Gulliver’s Travels is human corruptness. In The Underground Railroad, white Americans are obviously corrupted because they do not view African Americans as equals, deny them freedom, and use them as slaves. It was also ironic that Caesar was reading the book, Gulliver’s Travel prior to his escape, and the corrupt white race is what caused him to lose his life. Overall, I think Whitehead used this book as a model for his own to show how two completely different stories can be similar, to provide irony, and to demonstrate similar themes.
An important symbol in "Underground Railroad" is the Griffith building. It is the first real contact with what life outside slavery can be for Cora. It is absoulute luxury, and she describes it as one of the tallest buildings in the nation, and had never seen anything like it. It is also stated that it towered over any structure in the south. She was also incredibley intrigued by the elevator, never having seen such a machiene. She "took the children to see their father on his birthday and got to hear the clopping of her foorsteps in the beautiful lobby" (88). This symbol serves an important purpose in showng Cora or Bessie's character and her disillustionment with the outside world. It is a classic trope, but it serves its point well. The Griffin Building is a metaphor for the most sucessful of the white people, and a hope that she could one day be as sucessful, or even just accepted as all the people in the building are.
One allusion that is seen throughout the story is the use of the Declaration of Independence. This is mentioned time and time again from the beginning to the end of the novel. The first time it is mentioned is when the white men on the Randall plantation are talking about a young boy named Michael. Michael was taught by a former master how to recite long passages of text and one of the passages he knew was the Declaration of Independence. This itself was ironic because before Michael was beaten to death by Connelly, he knew the Declaration of Independence and he was not independent at all considering he was enslaved for his whole life and ended up dying a slave so he was never independent or free at all. The Declaration of Independence was mentioned again in chapter 10 when Cora is in a classroom and the children older than 6-7 years old are reciting the Declaration of Independence which is important because Cora is more free than ever living at the Valentine plantation and going to school where the children are saying the Declaration of Independence versus not going to school at all when she was on the Randall plantation.
Gulliver's Travels is similar to this novel because in Gulliver's Travels, it is following the journey of Lemuel Gulliver who first is a surgeon and then goes on to become the captain of several ships. Over those journeys, Gulliver develops and grows as a character just like how Cora grows and develops as a character from the beginning when she is merely a slave on the Randall plantation to when she is extremely close to becoming a free black woman when she meets Ollie at the end of the novel.
Some of the biggest symbols and allusions in the novel were the Freedom Trail and the Underground Railroad. First of all, the Freedom Trail acts as a complicated metaphor. In real life it acts as a symbol of freedom against tyranny, a collection of famous locations and buildings that had an important impact in assuring America’s right to freedom and self-expression. In the novel however, the Freedom Trail is a very different thing. It instead is more of a representation of North Carolina’s freedom from black people after a swift and brutal genocide. So while it may represent “freedom”, it is only freedom in the same sense as a murderer being free from their victims. The trail becomes an entirely different entity than its real life counterpart, representing tyranny in charge rather than tyranny overthrown. Its miles of hanging corpses strike fear into the oppressed and pride into the oppressors, delaying and preventing the sort of revolution and fighting spirit Boston’s Freedom Trail currently embodies. And this antithesis helps to further symbolize the novel’s Freedom Trail’s peculiarity. Whitehead completely inverts this symbol of perseverance against authority into that of authority’s all powerful control, and turns what should be a symbol of peace into a symbol of hate and violence. Then, there is the Underground Railroad itself. Just as in actual history, the Underground Railroad is a symbol of hope and sanctity in an otherwise violent and cruel world. Each station is a bastion from the evils the of world, providing Cora with a reprieve from the attacks and cruelties of that society’s racism, as well as a means of escape from said attacks. Whenever a station is reached, the reader can be assured that no eugenics leader, genocide enthusiast, or horrid slaver will harm Cora at least until she passes through to the next state and deals with her next adventure. Even when Ridgeway and Homer managed to force Cora to show them a Railroad Station, Ridgeway was almost immediately incapacitated and all Homer could do was sit and listen to Ridgeway’s presumably last philosophical monologue before dying in that station, no matter in what state or when in the novel, each Underground Railroad station was able to become a symbol of safety until Cora’s next dangerous adventure arrived, much in the same way it did for actual slaves in America’s history. And the hopping between adventures that Whitehead so often does in The Underground Railroad strikes a strong parallel with the novel Gulliver’s Travels. Both novels used the device of traveling between smaller, more self contained adventures throughout their larger piece in order to tell a story about one main character. For Whitehead, it was Cora traveling from Georgia to Indiana in search of freedom for her life as a slave that broke the novel up into separate adventures. And for Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, it was Lemuel Gulliver’s adventures from Lilliput to Japan that each told their own independent stories. The style is prevalent in both books, and allows both authors to deliver their intended messages effectively and uniquely. When Swift did it, it allowed him to jump between scenarios and ideas in order to best display his satire on various different subjects. And by modeling after that, Whitehead is able to go between many different situations and show different forms of racism and how they affect Cora.
Post a Comment