The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Published 2016 · 381 pages · 86,915 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, History

How hard is The Underground Railroad to read?

The Underground Railroad scores 65 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
Colson Whitehead employs a precise but generally accessible vocabulary, incorporating historical terms like 'coffles,' 'pickaninnies,' and 'cat-o'-nine-tails' specific to the era of slavery. While these terms require some contextual understanding, the prose avoids archaic language or invented words, making it more direct than works like 'Moby-Dick' but more demanding than contemporary fiction.
Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
The prose features sentences of moderate length, often employing descriptive clauses and conjunctions to build narrative detail and emotional impact. While the syntax is fluid and clear, it generally avoids the extensive hypotaxis of Jamesian novels or the extremely long, winding sentences found in works like 'Absalom, Absalom!', making it more navigable than highly experimental fiction.
Abstraction: 48 out of 100
The narrative is predominantly concrete, immersing the reader in the brutal realities of slavery and Cora's physical journey. While characters grapple with profound themes of freedom, identity, and systemic injustice, these are explored through direct experiences and internal reflections that remain firmly anchored in the story's events, rather than through abstract philosophical discourse.
Information density: 65 out of 100
The text presents a rich tapestry of historical details, character backstories, and evolving socio-political landscapes across different states, demanding sustained attention. The narrative rapidly introduces new settings, characters, and systemic horrors, from the Randall plantation to the deceptive utopia of South Carolina and the brutal 'Freedom Trail' of North Carolina, creating a high conceptual load without relying on obscure allusions.
Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
While the narrative directly follows Cora's experiences and emotions, readers must infer the deeper societal critiques and connections between the various 'states' she encounters. The author often presents events with a detached tone, requiring the reader to discern the underlying horror and the true nature of 'freedom' and 'progress.' This approach demands more inference than direct exposition like '1984' (35), but is less opaque than 'The Great Gatsby' (65) where the narrator's bias fundamentally shapes all meaning.
Symbolic density: 70 out of 100
The novel is rich with pervasive symbolism, most notably the literal underground railroad itself, which serves as a powerful, evolving metaphor for escape and the elusive nature of freedom. Recurring motifs like Cora's garden plot, the various forms of chains, and the museum exhibits (especially the 'types' and distorted history) carry significant allegorical weight. These symbols consistently extend meaning beyond literal events, making the density higher than 'Heart of Darkness' (65) but not as all-encompassing as 'Moby-Dick' (90).
Ironic distance: 82 out of 100
Colson Whitehead employs a deep and consistent ironic distance, particularly in the stark contrast between official rhetoric and the brutal realities of systemic oppression. Descriptions of South Carolina's 'enlightened attitude' leading to forced sterilization, North Carolina's 'Freedom Trail' of lynched bodies, and the 'uplift' programs are presented with a biting, satirical edge. This pervasive gap between what is said and what is truly meant forces constant reader recalibration, placing it closer to the sharp satire of 'The Sellout' (85) than the more subtle biases of 'Lolita' (75).
Resolution withholding: 78 out of 100
The narrative is structured as a series of temporary havens and subsequent escapes, with each 'resolution' proving fragile, illusory, or tragically incomplete, denying definitive closure. The fates of many supporting characters, such as Lovey and Caesar, are often left ambiguous or implied, emphasizing the ongoing precarity of their lives. This consistent resistance to neat endings and the constant redefinition of freedom make the withholding of resolution more pronounced than in 'The Great Gatsby' (60), though not as extreme as '2666' (92) with its vast, unsolved mysteries.
Structural complexity: 65 out of 100
While primarily following Cora's linear journey, the novel frequently incorporates extensive flashbacks, such as Ajarry's origins and Ridgeway's backstory, and shifts in perspective to provide historical and societal context. The inclusion of historical runaway advertisements and the meta-narrative of the museum exhibits serve as formal elements that break the narrative flow and offer layered commentary. This structure is more complex than the simple retrospection of 'The Great Gatsby' (55) and approaches the multi-layered approach of 'Midnight's Children' (68).

How The Underground Railroad is regarded

The Underground Railroad holds a literary regard score of 76 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

What The Underground Railroad asks you to hold together

The Underground Railroad sustains Systematic (12) on the Model of Hierarchical Complexity: a constellation. Its highest passage reaches the same stage on pages 199–202. Read from the full text, all 153 passages. What the stages mean.

Where The Underground Railroad sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (153 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, The Underground Railroad scores 80 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Ironic
If you were a thing—a cart or a horse or a slave—your value determined your possibilities.
Symbol: Mythical (Archetypal)
Her fingers danced over valleys, rivers, the peaks of mountains, the contours of a new nation hidden beneath the old.
Mythos: Irony vi (Visio malefica) (irony vi)
The corpses hung from trees as rotting ornaments.
Genre: Romance + Anatomy
Each one a state of possibility, with its own customs and way of doing things.

Where the story of The Underground Railroad takes place

  • Antebellum America, 1830s-1850s: Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Indiana, and the tunnel beneath (1830 to 1855), the main setting
  • Ouidah and Charleston, Ajarry's capture and sale, c. 1790s-1810s (1790 to 1815)
  • The underground railroad: the literal tunnel and stations beneath the South

5 things that are true of The Underground Railroad, with the passage for each

  1. Cora's grandmother Ajarry was bought at Ouidah in a bulk lot of 88 people for sixty crates of rum and gunpowder.

    eighty-eight human souls for sixty crates of rum and gunpowder

  2. Big Anthony is punished over three days and finally roasted alive in carved stocks before invited guests.

    Randall’s visitors sipped spiced rum as Big Anthony was doused with oil and roasted.

  3. In South Carolina the town's tallest building is the twelve-story Griffin Building, which houses the bank, the lawyers and the doctors.

    At twelve stories, it was one of the tallest buildings in the nation

  4. North Carolina has abolished its Black population, and Black people appear only as hanged bodies.

    In North Carolina the negro race did not exist except at the ends of ropes.

  5. Ridgeway shoots the captive Jasper in the face to stop his singing and justifies it as a cost calculation.

    He held Boseman’s pistol in his hand and shot Jasper in the face.

Scenes in The Underground Railroad that Frye would name

63 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Pathos, untitled
Randall’s visitors sipped spiced rum as Big Anthony was doused with oil and roasted. A sacrificial public death staged as entertainment for guests.
Katabasis, untitled
The stairs led onto a small platform. The black mouths of the gigantic tunnel opened at either end. The first descent into the underworld of the railroad.
Anagnorisis, untitled
In fact, the niggers were participants in a study of the latent and tertiary stages of syphilis. Cora and Caesar learn that South Carolina's freedom is an experiment, the pivot that ends the haven.
Sparagmos, untitled
The corpses hung from trees as rotting ornaments. The Freedom Trail: the whole landscape is dismembered Black bodies.
Pathos, untitled
The noose lowered around Louisa’s neck and she was led up the stairs. The Friday Festival ritual execution of a captured girl.
Epos, untitled
“Here’s one delusion: that we can escape slavery. We can’t. Lander's oration to the assembled farm.

Books that share these scenes with The Underground Railroad

About the author

Colson Whitehead