144 pages • 4 hours read
Colson WhiteheadThe Underground Railroad
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Quiz
Reading Check, Multiple Choice & Short Answer Quizzes
Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.
Chapters 1-7
Reading Check
1. What is Caesar’s proposal to Cora?
2. What is Cora’s reputation with the other slaves?
3. Why isn’t Cora’s mother with her on the plantation?
4. How is Caesar different than many other slaves?
5. Why is Fletcher annoyed that Caesar has brought Cora along on his escape?
6. What system exists that challenges Ridgeway’s job catching runaway slaves?
Multiple Choice
1. What is Ajarry’s fantasy of her separated family?
A) They were never stolen from their village.
B) They died of the plague on board a slave ship.
C) They worked on a neighboring plantation.
D) They bought their freedom and escaped to the North.
2. Why does Caesar choose Cora to escape with?
A) Caesar says she is good luck.
B) It’s safer to escape in pairs.
C) Caesar is in love with Cora.
D) Caesar owes Cora a favor.
3. How does the author characterize Cora’s relationship with the other slaves on the Randall plantation?
A) reserved and respectful
B) violent and without trust
C) supportive and loving
D) licentious and manipulative
4. What point is Lumbly making when he says “If you want to see what this nation is all about […] you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America” (Page 71)?
A) that America was built by slaves
B) that Black people will need to be their own liberators
C) that America is an empty and dark place
D) all of the above
5. What larger concept does Ridgeway’s character symbolize?
A) the American Imperative
B) Everyone must work, even if the work is immoral.
C) Everyone is a victim of society.
D) self-hatred
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why do the slaves of the Randall plantation fight so vehemently over their corners of land?
2. How does Cora’s confrontation with Blake establish her characterization early in the novel?
3. What does Cora’s friendship with Lovey imply about Cora’s characterization?
4. What is notably different in Colson Whitehead’s re-imagining of the Underground Railroad? How does this fictionalization of the Underground Railroad function as both plot device and metaphor?
Chapters 8-11
Reading Check
1. What event disrupts the social where Cora and Caesar meet again?
2. What jobs employ Cora in South Carolina?
3. What does Dr. Stevens recommend Cora do with her body?
4. After they learn of the more sordid realities of their new home in South Carolina, why do Caesar and Cora hesitate to leave?
Multiple Choice
1. Why does dormitory 40 remind Cora of Hob?
A) The girls are always fighting with one another.
B) The girls in dormitory 40 have no family.
C) Dormitory 40 is for girls perceived as problems.
D) Dormitory 40 is for both men and women.
2. In Cora’s view, what is problematic about the Museum of Living History?
A) Black people are placed in roles that retraumatize them.
B) Many of the scenes are not factual.
C) People from the town harass the actors.
D) all of the above
3. What does Sam tell Cora and Caesar about the new Griffin hospital?
A) Scientists are impregnating Black women.
B) Slave catchers are rounding up Black patients.
C) Doctors are sterilizing Black women.
D) Doctors are using Black patients for experimentation.
4. How does Cora assert her autonomy in a small but decisive way in the Museum of Living History?
A) She secretly passes on the truth to the white tourists.
B) She focuses on one patron to stare down with malice.
C) She commits to the fiction of the history as a way of disappearing from her reality.
D) She encourages others not to take a job there.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does Cora feel resentment toward her mother? How does the author justify this resentment?
2. What is Whitehead criticizing with his depiction of and Cora’s experience with the Museum of Living History?
3. How does Dr. Stevens recycle the dehumanization of Black people despite his seemingly liberal attitude?
4. In what ways do white people in South Carolina disappoint and betray Cora?
Chapters 12-16
Reading Check
1. Why are the graves of Black people targeted by grave robbers?
2. Why is Martin Wells surprised to find Cora in the Underground Railroad stop in North Carolina?
3. Why is Martin’s wife Ethel upset about Cora hiding in her attic?
4. What town event does Cora witness from a hole in the attic?
5. How are Martin and Ethel punished by the town upon Cora’s discovery?
Multiple Choice
1. Why does Carpenter steal the bodies of Black people?
A) He uses the bodies to trick slave catchers.
B) He conducts experiments on their bodies.
C) He sells the bodies to anatomy students.
D) He has no respect for Black people.
2. That the Freedom Trail is strewn with bodies is best seen as an example of which of the following literary devices?
A) characterization
B) juxtaposition
C) imagery
D) irony
3. What is Martin’s explanation for the differing attitudes toward Black people in North Carolina versus South Carolina?
A) South Carolina is more concerned about slave revolts.
B) North Carolina is more religious.
C) North Carolina has stricter laws about harboring fugitive slaves.
D) North Carolina is interested in becoming a Free State.
4. What ultimately gives away Cora, Ethel, and Martin?
A) Venezuelan pox spreads around the house, connecting Martin’s illness to a source.
B) Fiona discovers Cora hiding in the attic.
C) Cora screams when she watches a town lynching, calling attention to herself.
D) Martin’s intense nervousness makes him confess he is harboring a fugitive slave.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does the author include the character of Carpenter in chapter 12?
2. What is the significance of the Underground Railroad engineer’s manner of speech in Chapter 13?
3. What historical trend does the presence of Martin’s servant Fiona allude to?
4. What socio-historical lesson does the author teach through Ethel and Martin’s fate?
Chapters 17-20
Reading Check
1. How does Ethel reconcile the institution of slavery with her religion?
2. Why are Ridgeway and his crew traveling west instead of returning to the South?
3. What signs of trauma does Jasper portray?
4. What relationship does Ridgeway have with Mabel, Cora’s mother?
Multiple Choice
1. Why does Homer stay with Ridgeway if Homer is technically free?
A) Homer loves Ridgeway like a father.
B) Homer knows he has no other future.
C) Homer is afraid of Ridgeway’s wrath.
D) Homer is looking for his father and believes working with a slave catcher will one day reunite them.
2. What point does the author make about American history by including allusions to the wars against Native American tribes?
A) America is built on terrorizing certain groups of people.
B) All people will try to find someone else to subjugate.
C) American expansion was a bloody but productive period in American history.
D) Native Americans and enslaved Africans should have worked together to take down their white enemies.
3. What does Ridgeway’s explanation of the Randall plantation’s descent into terror reveal about his character?
A) He is especially cruel for taunting Cora with what she is returning to.
B) He is especially vindictive because he knows Cora will feel guilty about Lovey’s horrific death.
C) It is possible to be an even worse person than Ridgeway.
D) all of the above
4. Why does Homer bring Cora a dress to wear?
A) He feels bad for her and wants her to feel valued.
B) She reminds him of his mother.
C) He is going to help her escape by looking less like a fugitive slave.
D) Ridgeway is going to take Cora out to dinner.
5. What do Ridgeway and Cora have in common?
A) They both want to find Caesar.
B) They are both concerned about Homer.
C) They both hate Cora’s mother Mabel.
D) They both believe slaves should be free.
6. Why did Caesar believe Cora made a good escape companion?
A) He realized that slavery had dumbed down the minds of the other slaves, but not Cora’s.
B) He was in love with her and wanted to create a new life with her.
C) He convinced himself Cora had a magic about her that would help him in his journey to freedom.
D) He felt pity for Cora and thought he could save her.
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What is disconcerting about the character of Homer?
2. How does Ridgeway taunt Cora and demonstrate his control over her?
3. What is ironic about Ridgeway’s relationship with Homer?
4. How does Whitehead incorporate poetic justice within Cora’s rescue?
Chapters 21-26
Reading Check
1. Describe the Valentine farm.
2. What does Sam confirm about Caesar?
3. What happened to Terrance Randall?
4. Why does Mingo take over leadership of the Valentine farm?
5. What happened to Mabel?
Multiple Choice
1. Why is Cora so moved by Sybil and Molly?
A) She has never seen a Black mother care for her child so lovingly.
B) She is jealous of their bond.
C) She hopes they can extend the same kind of love to her.
D) They inspire her to have children of her own.
2. How does Gloria embody the notion of code-switching?
A) She speaks differently around white people and Black people.
B) She is an excellent liar.
C) She is an accomplished orator.
D) She crafts convincing arguments about abolition.
3. Why does Royal want Cora to see how the Underground Railroad “fits together. Or doesn’t” (Page 271)?
A) He doesn’t want Cora to be disillusioned by the Valentine farm.
B) He doesn’t want her to get lost.
C) He wants her to be inspired by how big the operation has become.
D) He wants her to leave as soon as she can.
4. What does Valentine’s real identity confirm about emancipation?
A) It can never be accomplished.
B) It can only be accomplished by working with white people.
C) Black people cannot rely on white people to help them.
D) The road to freedom will be long and arduous.
5. Landers’s analysis of America as a country that should not exist but is nonetheless real is an example of which literary device?
A) irony
B) foreshadowing
C) paradox
D) imagery
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How has Cora’s journey made her more emotionally available to Royal?
2. How does Royal’s experience as a freeborn man inform his work with the Underground Railroad?
3. How does Royal’s belief in Cora parallel Caesar’s?
4. What does Valentine Farm library symbolize?
5. What do Mingo’s and Landers’s differing views on the path to emancipation indicate about the history of slavery?
Quizzes – Answer Key
Chapters 1-7
Reading Check
1. to escape the Randall plantation and run to the Underground Railroad (Chapter 1)
2. The other slaves find Cora stand-offish, perverted, and odd. (Chapter 2)
3. Cora’s mother ran away from the plantation years ago. (Chapter 3 + Chapter 4)
4. He can read and do woodworking. (Chapter 5)
5. Surprises bring risks. (Chapter 6)
6. Court systems protecting escaped slaves in Northern states (Chapter 7)
Multiple Choice
1. D (Chapter 1)
2. A (Chapter 2)
3. B (Chapters 2-4)
4. B (Chapter 6)
5. A (Chapter 7)
Short-Answer Response
1. Slaves on the Randall plantation are attached to what little they can claim. (Chapter 2)
2. Cora’s confrontation with Blake establishes her strength and individual fortitude. (Chapter 2)
3. Cora’s friendship with Lovey shows a softer layer to Cora’s characterization. Cora extends kindness and even some type of love to Lovey, thus showing Cora’s capacity to love. This relationship highlights how, despite her tough exterior, Cora does want companionship in her life. (Chapter 4)
4. Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad is an actual railroad in cavernous underground pathways. This physical re-imagining of the Railroad is a literal vehicle for transporting characters and therefore for propelling the plot of the novel. It also acts as a metaphor of the journey Cora will undergo and the many people who help her along the way. (Chapter 6)
Chapters 8-11
Reading Check
1. A Black woman screams out for her stolen children. (Chapter 9)
2. a nanny and then an actor in a museum (Chapter 10)
3. sterilize herself (Chapter 10)
4. because South Carolina is not as bad as their life on the Randall plantation (Chapter 11)
Multiple Choice
1. C (Chapter 10)
2. D (Chapters 10-11)
3. C (Chapter 11)
4. A (Chapter 11)
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Cora feels resentment to her mother for escaping the plantation without her. Whitehead justifies this resentment by expressing that Cora was abandoned by her mother to a system of cruel oppression. (Chapter 9)
2. The author uses Cora’s experiences in the Museum of Living History to criticize the white washing of the Black experience. He is also criticizing the white American tendency to force Black people into roles that recycle their subjugation. (Chapter 10)
3. Though outwardly liberal and progressive, Dr. Stevens’s suggestion that Cora get sterilized is another example of a white man enforcing control over a Black woman’s body. It also signifies that he doesn’t believe Black people can birth healthy children or raise their children well. (Chapter 10)
4. The white people in South Carolina appear to be offering freedom to Cora, but on closer inspection they are oppressing and controlling her with the illusion of employment, free will, and a hopeful future. (Chapter 11)
Chapters 12-16
Reading Check
1. Most Black people were not able to hold vigil over loved one’s graves due to slavery and separation, and there was no legal recourse for a Black family to protect or recover a body. (Chapter 12)
2. Martin Wells is surprised to find Cora because the Underground Railroad in North Carolina had recently paused operations due to increased danger and a structural issue with the Railroad. (Chapter 14)
3. Martin’s wife Ethel is upset about Cora hiding in her attic because she knows if they are caught, it would mean certain death for Ethel and Martin. (Chapter 14)
4. From the hole in the attic, Cora witnesses the ritual lynching of Black people. (Chapter 14)
5. They are tied to a tree and stoned. (Chapter 16)
Multiple Choice
1. C (Chapter 12)
2. D (Chapter 14)
3. A (Chapter 15)
4. A (Chapter 16)
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Whitehead’s inclusion of Carpenter highlights the absurdity of white supremacy. Carpenter acknowledges that Black people in America are just as uneducated and poor as he is, but as a white man, no one uses this to oppress him. (Chapter 12)
2. Cora notes the engineer talks like a white man. This meeting suggests Cora’s inexperience with people from other parts of the country and is a sign that she has many more people to meet and discoveries to make. (Chapter 13)
3. In the 1800s, poor immigrants from Europe arrived in the United States in droves. Facing their own forms of prejudice, many of these immigrants became caught up in domestic servitude that was based on intimidating contracts and cheap labor. Fiona would be of this context, and it is ironic that she, a woman who would know her own share of prejudice and lack of choices, is vehemently against harboring fugitive slaves. (Chapter 14)
4. Whitehead uses the demise of Martin and Ethel to portray the sociological issues inherent in a racist system. This shows that white supremacy was so ingrained and impassioned that white people would reject their own people for betraying their race by helping a Black person. (Chapter 16)
Chapters 17-20
Reading Check
1. God would have intervened if He didn’t want Black people to be slaves. (Chapter 17)
2. to hunt for other slaves before returning to the plantations (Chapter 18)
3. Jasper won’t speak or eat; he will only sing old plantation songs. (Chapter 18)
4. Mabel is the one who got away. (Chapter 19)
Multiple Choice
1. B (Chapter 18)
2. A (Chapter 18)
3. D (Chapter 18)
4. D (Chapter 19)
5. C (Chapter 19)
6. A (Chapter 20)
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Homer is a little boy who walks and talks like an older man. He is a free, but he stays and helps Ridgeway track down fugitive slaves. He even sleeps with chains on to feel safe. (Chapter 18)
2. Ridgeway takes Cora out to dinner. (Chapter 19)
3. Though Ridgeway is the famed slave hunter, he has taken on the role of primary caretaker of a 10-year-old free Black boy. (Chapter 19)
4. Ridgeway believes himself superior and powerful, but a troop of Black men prove their power over him by rescuing Cora. Cora is even able to kick Ridgeway while he’s down, providing some catharsis. (Chapter 19)
Chapters 21-26
Reading Check
1. The Valentine farm is a farming community of Black people, some freeborn and others former slaves. They host intellectual talks featuring abolitionists, create a school system, and support one another in their freedom. (Chapter 21)
2. Caesar was lynched in South Carolina. (Chapter 23)
3. He died in a brothel, leaving his plantation without a direct heir. (Chapter 23)
4. The community discovers the leader, Valentine, is actually a Black man passing for white. (Chapter 24)
5. A snake bit her on her way to get Cora, and she drowned in the swamps around the Randall plantation. (Chapter 25)
Multiple Choice
1. A (Chapter 21)
2. A (Chapter 21)
3. C (Chapter 22)
4. C (Chapter 23)
5. C (Chapter 24)
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Cora has learned how to accept love and support from other people, and she is more emotionally available to Royal because of her regrets of not being more open to Caesar. (Chapter 22)
2. Royal was educated to respect himself and to know his worth. His sense of confidence, knowledge of the country, and faith in the power of Black people inspires Cora and positions him as a strong partner for her. (Chapter 22)
3. Royal has a sense that Cora could be the one to figure out how to connect many networks of the Underground Railroad. Similarly, Caesar selected Cora to run away with because he believed Cora has an inner power that will enable her to be a leader to freedom. (Chapter 22)
4. The Valentine farm library symbolizes an ultimate freedom. Freedom of expression and thought is empowering, which is why slave masters typically made sure their slaves never learned how to read. (Chapter 23)
5. Mingo believes the Underground Railroad should not aid in the hiding and abetting of fugitive slaves so that free Black people can work better with white people toward a new future. Landers believes there is no point in relying on white people, and all Black people deserve freedom. These opposing views threaten the free Black community at Valentine farm and split the community into two, thereby feeding into the white majority’s dependence on fractions within the Black community to hold one another back. (Chapter 24)
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