1. Contacts for help:dorineadalyn@gmail.com
Most trauma therapist understand that the impulse to avoid triggers are often done to
protect the bearers, however, it sometime comes at a cost. Most people who are experienced
torture, it be invalidating to soften things. This is because, such people want to people who can
understand their story by not taking all the pieces of their reality. A focus of the dark moments
may distract the full picture of fictional or real because people are not just defined experiences.
A reading of the Colson Whitehead, “Underground Railroad” clearly informs the reader the
author did not shy away from bit of fantasy. Instead of figuring the railroad as a network of those
who are assisting Cora to secretly move, the novel transforms the Underground Railroad into real
train. The use of the fantasy was not mean to soften thing of the reader because the novel doesn’t
just represent networks f system that help free slaves. Instead, it include real life while advancing
the truth of the novel and remaining a satisfying twist. This essay will explore how Colson
Whitehead uses fantasy in the novel Underground Railroad.
The Underground Railroad by Whitehand uses the poetic device called speculative satire
to reconfigure the audience historical understanding. In doing so, Whiteland’s applies the use of
speculative aesthetic or fantasy to explore the possibility of reparative justice that places the
novel explore peripheralization (Dischinger 82). The application of generic fancy exemplifies
instead of obscuring the manner in which history of slavery on the Blacks are over looked. Thus
it manages to redirect the use of fantasy in criticism where is often related to ideological and
psychic mystification. The novel uses train stop to symbolize a range of struggles for Blacks,
2. slaved or free throughout the America. Whitehead weaves historical and fantasy into a narrative.
This is a deliberate rejection of the demands that fiction based on fictional themes accurately and
realistically represents the past. Thus by rejecting absolute realism, the novel reminds the reader
that here is much more formation in regard African Americans that is impossible to know.
Because slavery forbidden the Black to read and write. The application of element of fantasy
such as Freedom Trail, empathize the notion that slavery was stranger that fiction because
Africans were forced to endure it. The deliberate use fantasy to represent inaccurate history in
the novel serve as reminder that slavery is not a relic of the past but markedly recent occurrence
that slavery has a horrifying impact in the present. The experiences of Cora in the South Carolina
des not focuses on the 19th
century, rather are eugenics events that blossoms in the 20th
century.
By distorting history in that way, the author challenges the reader’s assumption that slavery is act
of the past, instead, it is something is occur in the modern institutions, a powerful afterlife in the
present.
The underground rail road is one of the most powerful fantastical element used in the
novel. While it is real that the Underground Railroad existed, in most cases was not not literal
railroad in the manner it is depicted in the by Whitehand. Rather, it is an avenue to safe houses
and station agents. Who work to fee slaves through number of ways? The slaves to managed to
escape slavery through railroad do so through every available mode of transportation such
wagon, travelling carts, on foot or on horses. Whites question what is real and what is not real
by using the metaphor of railroad as a physical or literal phenomena. In doing so, the author
manages to draw the attention of that it is freedom of the black from white supremacist is beyond
imagination. No one best emphasize this idea in the novel that the experiences of Ridgeway is
infuriated and confounded by his constant inability to capture Cora and Mabel. The underground
3. is a unique because of its realistic blende of fantasy and history. Despite the Underground
happed above the ground based on the historical records, the novel imagines the Underground
Railroad as an actual network of underground tunnels having a locomotive. The character in the
novel cannot ex0lin where the tunnels came from or their existence without being discovered. In
this sense, the railroad are metaphorical instead of being literal thus making the soru of Cora to
be more fanatical. However there parts of the story that are really painful and depict actual
happening in history such as the runaway slaves that happened during the Civil Wars the blend
of history and fantasy thus forces the reader to ponder on the shameful occurrence and those that
are still occurring in the present times regarding racial prejudice. What follows from the
presentation of realism is mythical realism. Some of the parts of the novel is magical realism,
some are historical fiction and other parts of the narrative slave narrative. Whitehead transforms
the metaphorical Underground Railroad of in actual mode of location from a historical memory
of transport during slavery. The secret tracts connect the cities at the stops conductors like Martin
operate the train and the escaped slaves on their journey of freedom. The magical realism is used
in the novel to allow the author make a critique of the slaver by questioning the accepted realities
by juxtaposing them with magical elements that are purpose created to appear normal. Unlike
fantasy, magical realism focuses on ordinary people in the society
Beyond the question of historical fantasy, the author manages to portray the whites as
living in the fanatical imagination. This is shown by the character who are committed to a false,
mythical version of the History of America. This demonstrated by the repeated references to the
America Declaration of Independence. It explains that United States is founded on the belief that
all people are equal and free. Such delectation is a disapproval of the reality slavery and legal
status of the Black people in America because it represent Black as less status human beings.
4. Elijah Lander in his speech references his honesty and hypocrisy of the Americas myths by
arguing that the nation is built on a false belief that white people have authority to torture Blacks
and still territories of the Indians. As result African Americans must commit to their delusion
their own fanatical freedom. In this regard, myths and fantasy are portrayed t to have a both
positive and negative results in the novel. Through repeated declaration of Independence, history
and myths is blurred or is a fantasy especially for the African American people whose ver
existence is a threat to fantasy of the White supremacy.
Whitehead’s critical realims on speculative realims can be perceived as the inescapability
of the supremacy f te whiteman. In this undrtsding, there is nothing naïve because the
underground railroad is imagined as asubterrnean network of trains across antebellum south.
Rather, the conductor leaves the bewiedr riders in other states athat are uniquevly commited to
their systematic dehumanization of the Blacks. And thus the creation f the railroad remains
amystery to the audience. This can best be explained by Saldivar the readers are to confront the
knowibility of phenomena rather than knowing the “the Thing-in-itself”. Based on the fanatcy
world created by Whitehead in the novel, the whire domination and objection of the blckas are
inescapable. They are twin pillars of the Amerca history and cannot be deaed away. They
constabtly remins intacr even if the uthor imagination in the nvell goes wild. Sadlvar exlore the
issue of spcualtive relaims as foundenational of posttrace fiction. He uses this form of fanatcy t0
revers the nomal occrence of fantcy by turning it wayfrom th lernt forms of daydream delusion
and denial to amanifld charitics of history. (Historical 594). Thus fanacy in the novel become an
avune through which the historical truth are exposed rather thanan indulged ints negation.this
aesthitics exemplifies Undergound Trainroald fanatic nature but as a trouble in the narrative
ciceit.
5. Despite using fanacing to elucidate of slavery, there are
Works Cited
Dischinger, Matthew. States of Possibility in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.
JSTOR. Vol. 11. No.1. (2017). P. 82. Retrieved from:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/globalsouth.11.1.05#metadata_info_tab_contents
