Cora's View Of Freedom

“We deal with our mind from morning till evening, and it can be our best friend or our worst enemy” (Dalai Lama). Cora’s earliest definition of freedom stemmed from the little she saw around her and what little she knew of the world. From the stories she heard the other slaves tell, to the few glimpses of freedom she witnessed her white counterparts enjoy. As the saying goes, you can’t miss what you never had. At first Cora didn’t run for her freedom so much as she ran from the abuse and the hurt. She chose to run that night because she knew those stories she heard of the new plantation owner the other Randall brother, stories of harsher abuse and tougher punishments, were about to become her reality. Though from her early days on the plantation,
Cora did dream of a day she would be free. Free to roam as she pleased, eat when and what she wished, free to enjoy the company of whom she wished.
A basic freedom, but so much more than anything she had. At the first thought of running, Cora knew there would be risks, but she could not comprehend the magnitude of those risks. With nothing left to lose, that innocent and naïve view of freedom was much greater than anything she had, and she chose to take the risk. That first step, modest in the overall journey Cora would undertake, is the first step to freedom. It was in itself a part of the freedom she sought. Early on she knew the white man’s fears though she did not understand them, and she saw the black man’s oppression and how they were broken slowly over time, as an entire mass and not just the person. But having never truly witnessed or experienced freedom, she thought that basic privileges were what freedom meant. Having only known the abuse, the cat-o’-nine-tails, and abandonment she thought freedom would be an escape from that. As the story progresses Cora’s definition of freedom evolves every time it seems to escape her. When Cora and Caesar first reached South Carolina, the freedom attained them was like nothing they had seen before. Here they had considered themselves
free. They had merely pushed the thought of the plantation out of their heads, but they hadn’t been free of its grips yet. They were only free of the abuse and the beatings given at the plantation. They were free to eat what they wished and to visit the store and spend their own earnings. But they were not free of their past, nor of the plantation, not as long as it had a grip of their thoughts and not as long as they had to look over their shoulders. Not only did their fear of the plantation and the bounty hunters still imprison the two, but South Carolina itself was a fake freedom.
The harsh realization that they were being manipulated under the guise of freedom snapped them back to reality. They worked where they were told to, ate what was given to them, earned the wages they were allowed, and shopped in the store they were allowed in. They were not asked before being assigned a new job, but were simply told where to go that very day. Even the doctors, under the guise of free treatment and the black uplift movement, had provided mandatory treatments to members of the black community either against their wills or without their knowledge. “‘It’s important research,’ Bertram informed him. ‘Discover how a disease spreads, the trajectory of infection, and we approach a cure.’ … The syphilis program was one of many studies and experiments under way at the colored wing of the hospital” (Whitehead). In some instances these treatments were in fact experiments, infecting the black population and not treating those infections in hopes of discovering the effects and level of ailment. But to Cora and Caesar at the time, this was more freedom than they had ever dreamt
of. Then in North Carolina, as Cora flees the bounty hunter Ridgeway, she finds herself hiding in the attic. A prisoner of her freedom. Free of shackles and cages, but imprisoned in ways she had not been on the plantation and in other ways just like the plantation. She was again a prisoner of fear, reduced to nothing more than old almanacs, a bedpan, and a small hole from which to see the world. Cora could not step out into the fresh air or stretch her legs; she couldn’t even make a sound for fear she would be found; yet she was free of the plantation. German philosopher Rudolf Steiner once wrote, “whether his unfreedom is forced on him by physical means or by moral laws, whether man is unfree because he follows his unlimited sexual desire or because he is bound by the fetters of conventional morality, is quite immaterial from a certain point of view...let us not assert that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, seeing that he is driven to them by a force other than himself” (Steiner 40). A person is not truly free while his or her actions are driven by a power other than themselves. In this instance, Cora is physically free, unbound by chains or prisons, but she is unfree because of the forces that bind her. Her every thought, every action, every reaction is not her own, but that of slavery and the plantation. That mental and moral imprisonment in turn is what leads to Cora’s recapture. Paralyzed by her fears, she remained in that attic far too long, arousing the suspicions of the neighbors and giving Ridgeway enough time to follow her trail to North Carolina. She had let her past catch up to her. In her quest for freedom, Cora finally finds herself in Indiana, at the Valentine ranch as it was called. Here Cora finds herself the closest she had ever been to freedom. She could work the jobs she wished, she could leave the ranch and return as she wished, she could cook her own food if she chose too. She even had access to a library, with no restrictions. The entire ranch was hers to roam, explore, and enjoy. Yet Cora was still not free, not truly. Her mind was still a prisoner. She and the other ex-slaves hid on that ranch, they did not choose to live there on their own free will. They were forced to live there, with nowhere else to go, this was the only place they could find refuge. By keeping with Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy “An action is felt to be free in so far as the reasons for it spring from the ideal part of my individual being; every other part of an action, irrespective of whether it is carried out under the compulsion of nature or under the obligation of a moral standard, is felt to be unfree” (Steiner 89). Cora and the others at Valentine ranch are not truly free, because their actions are not due to their unhindered conscious decision, but as a direct response or reaction to the elements around them. They are at Valentine ranch because that is the only place for them to be, they cannot set up their own living quarters outside of the ranch, they cannot work outside of the ranch, nor do they socialize outside. They are captive, bound to the ranch and to each other in their freedom. Again and again, the reader is reminded of Cora’s captivity, just as she is, through Ridgeway the symbol of her imprisonment. He is the thought and the evil that haunts her, the invisible chain that pulls her back to Randall and the plantation, he is the symbol of her fears. Every time Cora seems to be attaining her freedom, physically or mentally, he appears. Ready to shatter her concept of freedom, ready to take her back to her slave past. Throughout the book Whitehead references various aspects of slavery and the struggle with racism and finding a place for the black populous. As William T Sherman, during a politically driven dinner, so aptly stated “theoretical notions of humanity and religion cannot shake the commercial fact that their labor is of great value and cannot be dispensed with” (Opinionator). That is a problem even the North faced. On her journey, Cora is offered her freedom at a cost. The labor needed to maintain the economy, the plantations, the workforces, no one could deny their importance. Even the North in their struggle to maintain that labor force while still freeing the slaves never truly gave them their freedom. After a long and tiresome journey, filled with dangers, deaths, and pain, where Cora only ever glimpsed freedom but could never attain it, she was finally free. Free in mind and thus free in body as well. Only when she truly put the plantation behind her, only after the death of Ridgeway, only after losing everything she had or knew and putting hundreds and hundreds of miles between her and her past was Cora truly free of slavery; because she no longer let it enslave and envelope her mind. California, another symbol, this time of Cora’s long and tiresome journey. The farthest state from Georgia, the farthest she could possibly travel. She needed to put the plantation, the Randall’s, Ridgeway and the bounty hunters, and her past behind her before she could ever be free. At the end of her dangerous journey Cora too comes to that realization, “She wondered where he escaped from, how bad it was, and how far he traveled before he put it behind him” (Whitehead). She had traveled far enough, now finally put her past behind her and be free.