Behind-The-Scene Experiments In The Underground Railroad, By Colon Whitehead

In his novel, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead uses the events in his book to show his audience the difficulty that slaves experienced in their pursuit of true freedom. Through the use of fiction, Whitehead explores the imaginative possibilities beyond the conditions of the past or present (Wild). Although the story and characters are fictional, Whitehead’s use of actual historical data–slave interviews, the syphilis and population control experiments, real “wanted” ads in the beginning of chapters–demonstrates his ethos to the audience, suggesting that his characters’ feelings and experiences were shared by actual slaves.

Whitehead’s story follows Cora, a slave girl who escapes the plantation in order to find her place in the world. Even though she successfully gets away from the plantation that imprisoned her since birth, Cora realizes that she has not fully broken free from
the chains of slavery. As she moves between states, Cora discovers the different ways of oppression that white people still impose on the black population; she is exposed to the ongoing maltreatment beyond the fences of the plantation.

During her time in South Carolina, Cora discovers that white scientists are experimenting on black people in order to find a cure for syphilis, reduce their numbers, and breed them for desired traits.
Cora, Caesar and the rest of the colored population believed that they were finally free in South Carolina, since they were able to intermingle with whites and even make their own living from jobs. As the protagonist soon discovers, however, white people still continue their oppression, albeit now in covert ways. When Cora and Caesar find out about the behind-the-scene experiments on the black population, they are overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness; they cannot do anything about the situation, since hardly anyone would take their word over the doctor’s behind the tests. Whitehead’s passage about human testing reinforces the recurring theme of slaves’ inability to escape oppression. Even with knowledge of the experimentation, Cora and Caesar were powerless to stop the white man’s will in South Carolina, similar to how they were unable to stop it in their days on the
plantation.

While working at a museum in South Carolina, Cora develops a callous hobby: staring into spectators’ eyes, scaring them away. Her actions are not only a rebellion against oppression. Cora’s “evil eye” targets the weak link in the crowd; it sought “the imperfection in the chain that [kept them] in bondage” (126). Here, Whitehead refers to the fact that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, with the chain representing slavery in this context. He writes the rest of this passage, as well as many others, in a didactic tone, as mentioned by Jay Nordlinger in his article on National Review. By equating a person to a link, Whitehead explains how black people were continually suppressed: “taken individually, the link was not much. But in concert with its fellows, a mighty iron that subjugated millions despite its weakness… As a community they were shackles.” Through Cora’s actions, Whitehead suggests that the chain of oppression, the chain that has kept slaves in bondage for years, may be broken by exploiting its weak links. In order to achieve freedom, the enslaved must unite to break the shackle, but because disparity exists between them, black people remain subjugated.