The Underground Railroad

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. This, for Whitehead, is the true and naked character of America.

Terrance Randall is a man defined by his vicious brutality. He devises deeply sadistic and cruel ways to torture and kill his slaves that, according to Ridgeway, make Randall plantation stand out as an especially accursed place. Terrance seems to hate Cora especially, for her spirit, her strength, and her desire to preserve Chester’s innocence. Her advocacy for the boy, and willingness to receive Chester’s lashes herself, is what begins Terrance’s fixation upon her. It is not only physical submission that he craves, but psychological submission as well—something that Cora steadfastly refuses to display. Through the character of Terrance, Whitehead depicts both the physical and the psychological violence of the plantation. The women’s assertion of their own freedom upsets him the most, the loss of property that both Cora’s and Mabel’s flights represent. He becomes obsessed with Cora’s return because he must exert his will to dominate and show her that she is not free. Through this depiction, Whitehead highlights the intricate and multi-dimensional violence of enslavement. Terrance’s alcoholism and poor manners also display the excesses and moral decay of white plantation life. 

Caesar is one of the emotional anchors of the narrative. We only receive one vignette that details his interiority. Whitehead chooses place that vignette at a point in the narrative after the reader has already discovered that Caesar has been killed by a white mob that tore him from a jail cell in South Carolina. This increases the poignancy and pain of the vignette, which displays Caesar’s intricate humanity. In the vignette, we see Caesar’s tenderness toward Cora, his appreciation of her beauty and spirit. We see the heartbreak of his story as a person who was promised freedom, only to be torn from his family and sent to Randall. We also see that he, like Lander, saw in Cora’s singular strength the ability to achieve freedom. Through Caesar’s depiction, Whitehead highlights the intricate complexity and personhood that the institution of enslavement stole from the people it enslaved. Caesar shows us not only the great injustice and heartbreak of enslavement, but also the depth of humanity that the institution brutally stole and destroyed.