this is a discussion assignment, what you have to do is to reply to my classmates posts down below.
First, this is the description of the assignment we had to do: Underground Railroad Open Thread
Your post on the novel is open to any themes or topics you wish to introduce. Your post should be about 200 words in length, clearly state the task you aim to complete, clearly articulate the point you are making, and present specific textual evidence from the readings (including page numbers), making sure to explain explicitly how the evidence relates to your overall point.
In addition to topics of your own design, you can usethe options below to guide your writing and thinking (you can also use these frameworks for the directed threads as well):
Working through Confusion
Share a passage from the week’s reading that confuses you in some way. Describe why you are confused by the passage, and offer a tentative interpretation of what causes you the problems. Extra engagement can be demonstrated by responding to each other and working through confusion collaboratively.
Structure and Meaning
Offer your observation of some particularly striking, strange, or significant surface feature(s) of one of our texts, and explain how that feature(s) contributes to or drives the meaning of the text in that passage or overall.
Offering an Interpretation
Contrive some kind of interpretive statement about a text from the week’s reading and support with an explanation of relevant and strong textual evidence.
Criticizing a Perspective
In all of our texts, you will encounter characters, groups, and authors who seem to be communicating particular perspectives on the world. Describe whether you agree or disagree with this perspective, and what about the text drives your agreement or proves problematic for the perspective you discuss.
second, this is my response: Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” is a thrilling novel that depicts the nasty experiences the Blacks went through during slavery. Throughout the narration, Whites subjected the Black people to inhuman activities that served to demean their dignity. Cora, the main protagonist, grows up in slavery, and she has never known freedom. Cora’s grandmother, Ajarry, finds herself in America after slave catchers kidnap her from Africa. Once in America, the White people sell Ajarry many times and finally, she finds herself on Randall Plantation. Ajarry gets married three times and has five children. However, all her children die except Mabel, Cora’s mother. Mabel manages to escape from slavery, leaving Cora alone. Whitehead’s description discloses many themes including family heritage, endurance and rebellion, value and ownership, brutality and violation, and history and fantasy. This paper delves into the theme of tolerance and resistance.
Whitehead’s story illustrates the White people’s brutality against the slaves and the fact that they have to endure the pain and suffering. The slaves face racism, work on the plantations for long hours, and should not read and write. In fact, the Europeans subject the black people to severe torture and make them believe that none should rebel. In reality, the Whites mercilessly murder those slaves who attempt to escape or rebel. They instill a lot of fear to the captives such that those who rebel or seek to rebel, are unreasonable. Additionally, the Black women endure sexual violence from the White perpetrators. However, despite the fact that the line between escaping and death is thin, many slaves manage to break loose. When Mabel flees from slavery, she leaves her daughter Cora, who also gets the motivation to escape just like her mother. Finally, the urge to resist slavery brings unity among the captives, and together they end the slave trade.
Here is the first classmate post that id like you to respond to: “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead is a novel of fiction that discusses the matter of slavery in the United States. The story generally is narrated through Cora in a manner of third person. It discusses the hardships that took place for African Americans at that time as slaves and how hard was it for them to search for their own freedom.
So, this story resembles a lot of what was read previously. It may be related to Locke’s essay “The New Negro”, in a sense, that it touches the history of African Americans and the perception Locke wanted not to hold them back. As the narrator says: “The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the freemen had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others.” (Whitehead 61); therefore, such ideals is another way to say perception of a race being superior over the other.
Furthermore, it is similar to the naturalistic novels that we have read, for it illustrates hardships in life, society, problems of rape and love. These similarities make it quite similar to Crane’s “Maggie, A Girl of “the Streets”, Larsen’s “Passing”, Hurston’s “Spunk” and “Sweat”. This is seen in the fact that harsh life factors and events target African Americans in this novel. Even when she is saved she is not free as the story says: “To explain why he and his wife kept Cora imprisoned in their attic, Martin had to go back a ways.” (Whitehead 85). She was imprisoned to be saved from death and torture.
Post #2: The novel by Colson Whitehead titled ‘The Underground Railroad’ has is a narration that clearly brings out many themes that are therein. Some of the major themes in the novel include death and freedom, brutality and violation, fantasy, home and family and slavery among many others. The theme of slavery dominates in the novel. It gives an illustration of how the blacks were taken advantage of and subjected to the sadism of the whites. They are highly tortured and subjected to hard tasks that change their character and make them to be violent too. Cora among other blacks face it rough, for instance, Lovey is hung on her large metal spike by her ribs, Cora kicks Ridgeway severely when she had a chance to kill him. “There was an order of misery, misery tucked inside miseries, and you were meant to keep track” (Whitehead 7) “Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.” (Whitehead 44) The theme of family and home is highly depicted. Cora, her mother and grandmother struggle to live in their inherited land. However, the escape of her mother makes her to work harder and make many attempts to escape and reunite with her. “Somewhere, years ago, she had stepped off the path of life and could no longer find her way back to the family of people.” (Whitehead 53)
make sure to talk about the topic, which is the novel, and not their way of writing. make sure nothing is plagiarized, you can also disagree with something if you have a valid point. I will upload the book as well.
