![]() ![]() By talking about Ajarry’s life so matter-of-factly, Whitehead prepares his readers to make ethical judgments for themselves instead of relying on the narrative for guidance. The message of such an opening chapter is clear: This book will be full of horrors, but it won’t dwell on those horrors in sentimental ways. Instead, they are summarized dispassionately in a few short pages. These events could be the subject of a long and painful novel of their own. Ajarry’s life is full of tragedy after heartbreaking tragedy: her mother’s death, her father’s kidnapping and murder, her own kidnapping by slavers, her separation from her relatives, her failed suicide attempts, being sold repeatedly, the loss of three husbands and four children. Second, this chapter sets the emotional mood of the entire novel. Other chapters have little to do with Cora’s life story but still illuminate some of the novel’s themes. Some of these short character studies provide relevant information that affects Cora’s story in significant ways. Yet this attention makes sense in the broader context of The Underground Railroad for several reasons.įirst, every odd-numbered chapter of the novel is, such as this one, a short character study of someone other than Cora, the protagonist. ![]() Four of her five children died as well Mabel, Cora’s mother, was the only one who lived past the age of 10.Īt first Whitehead’s choice to spend the entire first chapter talking about Cora’s grandmother, a woman who otherwise does not appear much in the narrative, might seem strange. Once there, she married three times one of her husbands was sold off of the plantation, and the other two died. She reached the American South, where she was sold multiple times before finally being bought by a representative of the Randall plantation. Ajarry was taken to the port city of Ouidah (part of modern-day Benin), where she was sold onto a different ship than the rest of her family.Ījarry tried to take her life twice aboard the ship but was thwarted both times. Ajarry’s father, who had been kidnapped in a previous raid, was killed by slavers when he wasn’t able to march as fast as the other captives. Ajarry was born in Africa and kidnapped by slavers as a child, along with the rest of her village. The chapter turns to the history of Cora’s grandmother, Ajarry, and how her history has influenced Cora. The novel’s narrator says that this response is “her grandmother talking” three weeks later, when she agrees to run away with Caesar, it is “her mother talking.” When Caesar, a new slave on the Randall plantation in Georgia, approaches Cora and suggests that she escape with him, she turns him down. ![]()
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