The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead (2016)
“America reimagined as a series of nightmares — each state a different way the same country has always found to destroy Black lives.”
Character Analysis
Cora is defined by what has been taken from her before the novel begins: her mother, her protection, her right to occupy space. She is a 'stray' on a plantation that runs on hierarchy, which means she has no one. What she has instead is stubbornness — a ferocious unwillingness to yield the small territories the world allows her. Her garden plot is the first version of this; her survival is the last. She does not grow warmer or more communicative over the course of the novel; she grows more capable. The refusal to make Cora likable in the conventional sense is one of Whitehead's most important choices.
Limited dialogue, careful observation, interior restraint — she watches more than she speaks. Her interiority is guarded because interiority was a luxury the plantation punished.