The alternate history novel tells the story of Cora and Caesar, two slaves in the antebellum South during the 19th century, who make a bid for freedom from their Georgia plantation by following the Underground Railroad, which the novel depicts as a rail transport system with safe houses and secret routes.
What made the Underground Railroad so successful?
- The Underground Railroad was established to aid enslaved people in their escape to freedom. The railroad was comprised of dozens of secret routes and safe houses originating in the slaveholding states and extending all the way to the Canadian border, the only area where fugitives could be assured of their freedom.
What is Underground Railroad short?
The Underground Railroad was a network of people, African American as well as white, offering shelter and aid to escaped enslaved people from the South. It developed as a convergence of several different clandestine efforts.
Is the book The Underground Railroad a true story?
Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-award-winning novel, The Underground Railroad is based on harrowing true events. The ten-parter tells the story of escaped slave, Cora, who grew up on The Randall plantation in Georgia.
How does Underground Railroad novel end?
She fights back at the entrance and leaves Ridgeway to die, propelling herself down the long, dark tunnel on a handcar. Because this section of the Railroad is unfinished, Cora eventually reaches the end of the line and must carve the rest of the tunnel out herself.
What does Underground Railroad mean in history?
-Harriet Tubman, 1896. The Underground Railroad—the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War—refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage. Wherever slavery existed, there were efforts to escape.
What role did the Underground Railroad play?
The Underground Railroad provided hiding places, food, and often transportation for the fugitives who were trying to escape slavery. Along the way, people also provided directions for the safest way to get further north on the dangerous journey to freedom.
Does the Underground Railroad still exist?
It includes four buildings, two of which were used by Harriet Tubman. Ashtabula County had over thirty known Underground Railroad stations, or safehouses, and many more conductors. Nearly two-thirds of those sites still stand today.
Was Valentine farm a real place?
The article uses the novel’s example of Valentine Farm, a fictional 1850s black settlement in Indiana where protagonist Cora lands after her rescue from a fugitive slave catcher by Royal, a freeborn black radical and railroad agent.
Will there be a season 2 of Underground Railroad?
The Underground Railroad Season 2 won’t come in 2021 Whether the series is renewed or not, we’ve got some bad news when it comes to the release date. The Underground Railroad Season 2 won’t come in 2021.
Why does Stevens rob graves?
According to his society, Stevens’ grave robbing is a crime but not the most serious of crimes. Stevens himself chooses to understand grave robbing as a noble calling in order to ease his own conscience.
What happens Ridgeway?
Ridgway is more honest about the reality of America than many other white characters in the novel, refusing to uphold myths about the country and its history. He is obsessed by his failure to capture Mabel and Cora, and he ends up being killed by Cora in Indiana in a final physical battle that resembles a dance.
What happened to Caesar in the Underground Railroad book?
While the show doesn’t show us what happens after their encounter, Caesar comes to Cora in a dream later, confirming to viewers that he was killed. In the novel, Caesar faces a similar fate of being killed following his capture, though instead of Ridgeway and Homer, he is killed by an angry mob.
Why was the Underground Railroad created?
The Underground Railroad was a secret system developed to aid fugitive slaves on their escape to freedom. Involvement with the Underground Railroad was not only dangerous, but it was also illegal. So, to help protect themselves and their mission secret codes were created.
How successful was the Underground Railroad?
Ironically the Fugitive Slave Act increased Northern opposition to slavery and helped hasten the Civil War. The Underground Railroad gave freedom to thousands of enslaved women and men and hope to tens of thousands more. In both cases the success of the Underground Railroad hastened the destruction of slavery.
Who was John Brown in history?
John Brown, (born May 9, 1800, Torrington, Connecticut, U.S.—died December 2, 1859, Charles Town, Virginia [now in West Virginia]), militant American abolitionist whose raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), in 1859 made him a martyr to the antislavery cause and was instrumental
On Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad
Cora’s life is divided into five distinct phases, which are shown in the Underground Railroad: 1. The way of life in Georgia When Cora’s mother, Mabel, abandons her, Cora is placed as a juvenile misfit among the slaves of the Randall farm, which she eventually escapes. When other slaves attempt to take over the small plot of land she has inherited from her mother (who in turn got it from Cora’s grandmother, Ajarry), she protects it tenaciously, even demolishing a doghouse that someone has built on it.
Her fellow slave Caesar, who recognizes her strong sense of independence, invites her to accompany him on his escape.
The two escape away in the middle of the night and are suddenly joined by a young girl named Lovey, who becomes their companion.
Cora and Caesar finally make it to the home of Mr.
- Fletcher transports them to the home of Lumbly, the station agent, on his cart, which is wrapped with a blanket.
- 2.
- In order for them to be able to live quietly in South Carolina until another train arrives to transport them farther north, they are given counterfeit documents with phony names.
- She and Caesar let three trains to come and depart without getting on board them.
- Cora is a young black woman who lives in a dormitory with other young black ladies.
- Ridgeway, a slave catcher who has been on the trail of Cora and Caesar, comes to the dormitory where Cora is now residing.
- Cora remains at the location, but neither Sam nor Caesar accompany her.
3.
In North Carolina, the conductor informs her that he is not authorized to transport passengers and abandons her at what looks to be an abandoned train station.
In Martin’s opinion, Cora shouldn’t have come since the state of North Carolina is becoming increasingly unfriendly toward fugitive slaves and those who shelter them.
In order to protect herself, Cora hides in an attic for months, observing through a window each Friday while the town organizes a celebration to execute captured fugitives.
Ethel, who had a childhood desire of becoming a missionary in Africa, takes advantage of the chance to read from the Bible to Cora.
In the background, Cora witnesses Martin and Ethel being stoned to death by Ridgeway as she is being taken away by Ridgeway.
Take a trip across Tennessee.
It is important to note that many of the places they pass through have been devastated by natural calamities.
Lovey (who was executed by Terrance Randall) and Caesar (who was executed by Terrance Randall) are two characters with whom Ridgeway likes conversing, especially when he can tell her their grisly deaths (who was ripped to pieces by an angry South Carolina mob).
The following night, Boseman removes Cora’s chains in order to rape her a second time.
The Royals and two of his colleagues rescue Cora when the two fighters are engaged in combat and away from their weapons.
They accompany Cora to an underground railroad station where she will continue her journey to Indiana.
Indiana and Beyond: A Look at the Present and the Future Cora begins a new life on the Valentine farm, which is a community of free black people and former slaves who have come together to work together.
She falls in love with Royal, who offers to take her to Canada, but she refuses to respond to his offer until she has a chance to think about it.
He has no idea where the track will take him.
Mingo, a legally freed slave, believes that sheltering fugitives puts them all in risk by inflaming white people’s hostility toward them.
Ridgeway and Homer are successful in apprehending Cora.
She continues on the path till it comes to an end at a cave. A passing wagon offers her a ride: the driver is headed to Missouri and then to California, and she accepts the offer. Cora agrees to go on a ride.
The Underground Railroad: Plot Overview
It relates the narrative of Cora, a girl who escapes from the Georgia farm where she and her family had been slaves for three generations, and joins the Underground Railroad. Having been transported to the United States from Africa on a slave ship, Cora’s grandmother Ajarry passed away after decades of toiling in the fields of the Randall plantation. Cora’s mother, Mabel, fled away, abandoning Cora, and Cora is on a quest to find out what happened to her mother, no matter where she travels. Cora is harassed by her other slaves since she has been left without her mother to defend her.
- Finally, she is able to escape with the help of another slave, Caesar.
- There is an underground railroad in this tale, and it is a real railroad with stops underneath fields and residences.
- The journey from Georgia to South Carolina establishes a pattern for telling a series of tales about Black experience not just during slavery but throughout American history by creating a series of stories about Black experience.
- Cora and Caesar are housed, fed, and given work in this facility.
- Then, after working as a housemaid, Cora is sent to work as a “actress” at a museum that presents a very false and favorable portrayal of both African and slave life.
- Then they find out that the slave catcher, Ridgeway, has arrived in pursuit of them and has captured them.
- Cora’s next trip is North Carolina, where the situation for Black people, whether they are in the country legally or illegally, is significantly worse.
A gruesome display takes place in the town square every Friday night, and Cora is forced to dwell in a small hiding area in the Wells’ attic, where she witnesses it.
Friday Festivals are held in towns all over the state, and they are held every week.
At long last, Cora becomes unwell and is forced to be cared for at the Wells’ house.
Ridgeway, a slave catcher, is present with the patrollers, and he binds Cora to his cart and drags her away, while Edith and Martin Wells are hung from an oak tree.
Cora is transported across the state by Ridgeway and his two accomplices, a violent guy named Boseman who wears a necklace made of human ears and an eccentric Black youngster named Homer.
They’ve also taken in a runaway named Jasper, who is continually singing hymns to himself.
Even the white settlers have been driven from their homes.
However, due to a yellow fever epidemic in the area, they are unable to leave the area until the flames have been extinguished.
Once they have eaten supper and informed Cora of Caesar’s death, they decide to camp out in the woods just outside of town for the night.
At that moment, the man with glasses comes with two other men, all of whom are armed.
Cora hops on Ridgeway’s back, and the two of them manage to immobilize him.
Royal, the guy with spectacles, is a conductor on the subterranean train who transports Cora to the Valentine farm in Indiana, where she will be married.
It is at this time that she and Royal begin to fall in love, and she also grows close to her housemate Sybil and Sybil’s daughter, Molly.
An elaborate banquet is held on the farm every Saturday night, after which there will be lectures, poems read aloud, singing and dancing.
After a buggy ride and picnic, Royal leads Cora to an abandoned home with an underground train station underneath it, where she may explore the station.
No one has any idea where it is going.
While on his way to California, Sam stops by the Valentine farm and informs Cora that Terrance Randall has been found dead and that no one is looking for her any longer.
They set fire to the buildings while the occupants leave the scene.
Eventually, Cora is apprehended by Ridgeway and Homer who order her to transport them to an underground railroad station.
As she was returning to take care of Cora, she was struck by a deadly snake, and her corpse was dragged into the marsh, where it perished.
Meanwhile, Homer is tending to Ridgeway and Cora is pumping the handcar through the tunnel.
As she travels along the trail, she comes across three covered wagons, the last of which is driven by an elderly Black man named Ollie.
He feeds her and informs her that he will be traveling to St. Louis in order to join a wagon train bound for California. She follows him and is intrigued by his narrative, which he will undoubtedly share with her along the road.
Amazon.com: The Underground Railroad (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (National Book Award Winner) (Oprah’s Book Club): A Novel: 9780385542364: Whitehead, Colson: Books
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and National Book Award-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, the #1 New York Timesbestseller, is a breathtaking tour de force charting a young slave’s exploits as she makes a desperate attempt for freedom in the antebellum South. Now there’s an original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins, which is available now. Cora is a slave who works on a cotton farm in Georgia as a domestic servant. Cora’s life is a living nightmare for all of the slaves, but it is particularly difficult for her since she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is about to become womanhood, which will bring her much more suffering.
- Things do not turn out as planned, and Cora ends up killing a young white child who attempts to apprehend her.
- The Underground Railroad, according to Whitehead’s clever vision, is more than a metaphor: engineers and conductors manage a hidden network of rails and tunnels beneath the soil of the American South.
- However, underneath the city’s calm appearance lies a sinister conspiracy created specifically for the city’s black residents.
- As a result, Cora is forced to escape once more, this time state by state, in search of genuine freedom and a better life.
- During the course of his tale, Whitehead skillfully re-creates the specific terrors experienced by black people in the pre–Civil War era, while smoothly weaving the saga of America from the cruel immigration of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the contemporary day.
- Look for Colson Whitehead’s best-selling new novel, Harlem Shuffle, on the shelves!
The True History Behind Amazon Prime’s ‘Underground Railroad’
It is a beautiful tour de force, following a young slave’s exploits as she makes a desperate push for freedom in the pre-Civil War South, and it has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It is a #1 New York Timesbestseller from Colson Whitehead. Amazon Prime Video has launched an original series helmed by Barry Jenkins, which is currently streaming. Cora is a slave who works on a cotton farm in Georgia as a domestic worker. Cora’s life is a living nightmare for all slaves, but it is particularly difficult for her because she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is about to become womanhood, which will bring her much more suffering.
- Things do not turn out as planned, and Cora ends up killing a young white child who tries to apprehend her in the process.
- Underground Railroad is more than a metaphor in Whitehead’s brilliant imagination; engineers and conductors manage a hidden network of rails and tunnels beneath the soil of the American South.
- A strategy to target the city’s black residents, however, is hidden under the city’s serene exterior.
- As a result, Cora is forced to flee once more, this time across the country in search of genuine independence.
- The tale of America is perfectly intertwined as Whitehead expertly re-creates the specific terrors experienced by black people in the pre–Civil War era, from the cruel importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the modern day.
Look for Colson Whitehead’s best-selling new novel, Harlem Shuffle, to be released soon!
Did Colson Whitehead baseThe Underground Railroadon a true story?
“The reality of things,” in Whitehead’s own words, is what he aims to portray in his work, not “the facts.” His characters are entirely made up, and the story of the book, while based on historical facts, is told in an episodic style, as is the case with most episodic fiction. This book traces Cora’s trek to freedom, describing her lengthy trip from Georgia to the Carolinas, Tennessee and Indiana.) Each step of the journey presents a fresh set of hazards that are beyond Cora’s control, and many of the people she meets suffer horrible ends.) What distinguishes The Underground Railroad from previous works on the subject is its presentation of the titular network as a physical rather than a figurative transportation mechanism.
According to Whitehead, who spoke to NPR in 2016, this alteration was prompted by his “childhood belief” that the Underground Railroad was a “literal tunnel beneath the earth”—a misperception that is surprisingly widespread.
Webber Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons While the Underground Railroad was composed of “local networks of anti-slavery people,” both Black and white, according to Pulitzer Prize–winning historianEric Foner, the Underground Railroad actually consisted of “local networks of anti-slavery people, both Black and white, who assisted fugitives in various ways,” from raising funds for the abolitionist cause to taking cases to court to concealing runaways in safe houses.
Although the actual origins of the name are unknown, it was in widespread usage by the early 1840s.
Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, argues that the Underground Railroad should be referred to as the “Abolitionist Underground” rather than the “Underground Railroad” because the people who ran it “were not just ordinary, well-meaning Northern white citizens, activists, particularly in the free Black community,” she says.
As Foner points out, however, “the majority of the initiative, and the most of the danger, fell on the shoulders of African-Americans who were fleeing.” a portrait taken in 1894 of Harriet Jacobs, who managed to hide in an attic for nearly seven years after fleeing from slavery.
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons “Recognizable historical events and patterns,” according to Foner, are used by Whitehead in a way that is akin to that of the late Toni Morrison.
According to Sinha, these effects may be seen throughout Cora’s journey.
According to Foner, author of the 2015 bookGateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, “the more you know about this history, the more you can appreciate what Whitehead is doing in fusing the past and the present, or perhaps fusing the history of slavery with what happened after the end of slavery.”
What time period doesThe Underground Railroadcover?
Caesar (Aaron Pierre) and Cora (Thuso Mbedu) believe they’ve discovered a safe haven in South Carolina, but their new companions’ behaviors are based on a belief in white supremacy, as seen by their deeds. Kyle Kaplan is a producer at Amazon Studios. The Underground Railroad takes place around the year 1850, which coincides with the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Act. Runaways who had landed in free states were targeted by severe regulations, and those who supported them were subjected to heavy punishments.
In spite of the fact that it was intended to hinder the Underground Railroad, according to Foner and Sinha, the legislation actually galvanized—and radicalized—the abolitionist cause.
“Every time the individual switches to a different condition, the novel restarts,” the author explains in his introduction.
” Cora’s journey to freedom is replete with allusions to pivotal moments in post-emancipation history, ranging from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in the mid-20th century to white mob attacks on prosperous Black communities in places like Wilmington, North Carolina (targeted in 1898), and Tulsa, Oklahoma (targeted in 1898).
According to Spencer Crew, former president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and emeritus director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, this “chronological jumble” serves as a reminder that “the abolition of slavery does not herald the abolition of racism and racial attacks.” This problem has survived in many forms, with similar effects on the African American community,” says the author.
What real-life events doesThe Underground Railroaddramatize?
Though they believe they’ve discovered a safe haven in South Carolina, Caesar (Aaron Pierre) and Cora (Thuso Mbedu) soon discover that their newfound friends’ acts are motivated by a conviction in white supremacy. The Amazon Studios team, led by Kyle Kaplan, When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, it was during this time that the Underground Railroad came into being. Runaways who had landed in free states were targeted by severe regulations, and those who supported them were subjected to heavy punishments.
According to Foner and Sinha, the measure, which was intended to hinder the Underground Railroad, instead galvanized—and radicalized—the abolitionist cause.
“Every time a character moves to a different state, the novel restarts,” the author noted in his introduction.
Cora’s journey to freedom is replete with allusions to pivotal events in post-emancipation history, ranging from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in the mid-20th century to white mob attacks on prosperous Black communities in places like Wilmington, North Carolina (targeted in 1898), and Tulsa, Oklahoma (targeted in 1898).
According to Spencer Crew, former president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and emeritus director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, this “chronological jumble” serves as a reminder that “the abolition of slavery does not herald the abolition of racism and racial attacks.” These challenges continue to exist in various forms, with comparable consequences for the African-American community.
”
How doesThe Underground Railroadreflect the lived experience of slavery?
Caesar (Aaron Pierre) and Cora (Thuso Mbedu) believe they’ve discovered a safe haven in South Carolina, but their new companions’ acts are motivated by a conviction in white supremacy. Kyle Kaplan is a producer at Amazon Studios. The Underground Railroad takes place around the year 1850, the year of the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Act. Runaways who had landed in free states were targeted by stringent regulations, and those who supported them were subjected to heavy punishments. According to Foner and Sinha, the measure was intended to hinder the Underground Railroad, but instead galvanized—and radicalized—the abolitionist cause.
“Every time the individual switches to a different condition, the novel restarts,” the author added.
Cora’s journey to freedom is replete with allusions to pivotal moments in post-emancipation history, ranging from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in the mid-20th century to white mob attacks on prosperous Black communities in places like Wilmington, North Carolina (targeted in 1898), and Tulsa, Oklahoma (razed in 1921).
Colson Whitehead: ‘To deal with this subject with the gravity it deserved was scary’
Caesar (Aaron Pierre) and Cora (Thuso Mbedu) believe they’ve discovered a safe haven in South Carolina, but their new companions’ acts are belied by their conviction in white supremacy. Kyle Kaplan / Amazon Studios The Underground Railroad takes place around the year 1850, the year that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. Runaways who had landed in free states were targeted by severe regulations, and those who supported them were subjected to heavy punishments. This is made apparent in the book.
As one white character snidely observes, “the law says we have to hand over runaways and not obstruct their capture—not drop everything we’re doing just because some slave catcher thinks he’s onto his reward.” While Whitehead used the year 1850 as a “kind of mental cutoff for technology and terminology,” according to NPR, he was less concerned with chronology than he was with presenting a sense of the lived experience of Black Americans.
“The book is resetting every time the person switches to a different condition,” the author revealed.
According to Spencer Crew, former president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and emeritus director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, this “chronological jumble” serves as a reminder that “the abolition of slavery does not herald the abolition of racism and racial attacks.” These challenges continue to exist in other forms, with comparable consequences for the African American community.”
Review: ‘Underground Railroad’ Lays Bare Horrors of Slavery and Its Toxic Legacy (Published 2016)
When Colson Whitehead takes the Underground Railroad (the loosely interlocking network of black and white activists who helped slaves escape to freedom in the decades before the Civil War) and turns it into a metaphor for an actual train that transports fugitives northward, it becomes one of the most dynamic novels of the year. As a result, the novel is a powerful, even hallucinogenic experience that leaves the reader with a dismal awareness of the horrible human consequences of slavery. This novel is reminiscent of the chilling, matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, as well as echoes of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables,” and Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” as well as brush strokes borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Jonathan Swift.
The novel follows the story of Cora, a teenage slave who escapes the Georgia plantation where she was born, risking everything in her search of freedom, just as her mother Mabel had done years earlier.
Cora must travel from Georgia to South Carolina to North Carolina to Tennessee to Indiana, evading not only Ridgeway but also other bounty hunters, informers, and lynch mobs — with assistance, along the way, from a few dedicated “railroad” workers, both black and white, who are willing to put their lives on the line to save hers.
- ImageCredit.
- The novel’s literalization of the Underground Railroad is not the only instance of a dreamy quality in it.
- These surreal elements give the narrative a mythic dimension that gives “The Underground Railroad” more magic and depth of field.
- Whitehead was able to develop an elastic voice that can accommodate both brute realism and fablelike allegory, as well as the plainspoken and the poetic — a voice that allows him to convey the historical horrors of slavery with raw, shocking power.
- The harshness of life on the plantation is shown in vivid detail, including Cora’s gang-rape and whippings (which are sometimes followed by a washing in pepper water to increase the intensity of the suffering) that are commonplace.
- Whitehead.
- Human and animal bodies are burnt on pyres, both living and dead.
- Despite the threat of such heinous torture, Cora is unafraid to flee.
Whitehead says that in North Carolina, slave patrollers “did not require a justification to halt a person aside from their race or national origin.” One senator warns an enraged throng that their “Southern heritage lay unprotected and threatened” because of the “colored miscreants” who lurked in the shadows, threatening “to defile the residents’ wives and daughters.” Such paragraphs ring true today, given the police shootings of unarmed black men and boys, the stop-and-frisk practices that disproportionately target minorities, and the anti-immigrant rhetoric employed by politicians to inflame prejudice and fear among the public.
- Mr.
- He is under no obligation to do so.
- “It hasn’t even passed yet.” Mr.
- Meanwhile, he commemorates the hunger for freedom that has propelled generation after generation to continue in the pursuit of justice – despite threats and intimidation, despite reversals and attempts to turn the clock back.
As a result of his efforts, we now have a better grasp of both the American history and the American present. Sunday, August 7 will see the publication of an extract from “The Underground Railroad” in a special broadsheet section of the newspaper; there will be no internet edition.
The Underground Railroad
Listed in the following directories: Cora is a slave who works on a cotton farm in Georgia as a domestic servant. Cora’s life is a living nightmare for all of the slaves, but it is particularly difficult for her since she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is about to become womanhood, which will bring her much more suffering. Following a conversation with Caesar, a recent immigrant from Virginia, about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a scary risk and go to freedom.
- Despite the fact that they are able to locate a station and go north, they are being pursued.
- Cora and Caesar’s first stop is in South Carolina, in a place that appears to be a safe haven at first glance.
- And, to make matters worse, Ridgeway, the ruthless slave collector, is closing the distance between them and freedom.
- At each stop on her voyage, Cora, like the heroine of Gullivers Travels, comes face to face with a different planet, proving that she is on an adventure through time as well as space.
- The Underground Railroadis at once a dynamic adventure novel about one woman’s passionate determination to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, dramatic reflection on the past that we all share, according to the author.
Judges Citation
There are several archives where this is stored. Cora is a slave who works on a cotton farm in Georgia as a domestic worker. Cora’s life is a living nightmare for all slaves, but it is particularly difficult for her because she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is about to become womanhood, which will bring her much more suffering. Following a conversation with Caesar, a recent immigrant from Virginia, regarding the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a scary chance and flee the country.
Despite the fact that they are able to locate a station and proceed north, they are being pursued.
At their first visit in South Carolina, Cora and Caesar find themselves in a city that appears to be a safe haven at first glance.
Worse, the merciless slave catcher Ridgeway is on their tails, and they have no chance of escaping him.
At each stop on her voyage, Cora, like the protagonist of Gullivers Travels, comes face to face with a different planet, proving that she is on an adventure through time and space as well.
The Underground Railroadis at once a dynamic adventure story about one woman’s strong determination to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, dramatic reflection on the history that we all share, all in one film.