Cora’s Search for Human Dignity: A New Historicist Reading in Colson Whitehead’s The UndergroundRailroad

Abstract

Set in southern parts of USA, Colson Whitehead’sThe Underground Railroad delineates the pre-civil era ground-breaking concern of slavery and the historical rupture between races. This research explores how Whitehead’s novelponders into the quest of human dignity focusing on African slaves’ predicament under the grip of white masters. Consequently, Slavery catapults and pulverizes human dignity thereby resulting into dehumanization, insult and atrocities. The protagonist Corahowever escapes from the South to the North through the Underground Railroad. By taking theoretical insights on discourse, truth, power and subversion as proposed by Michel Foucault and Louis Montrose, this study scrutinizes how the oppressive power of the society hegemonizes the powerless and subversive power provokes the characters like Cora search for human dignity. Moreover, the research also exposes Whitehead’s motifs in preserving the Underground Railroad as historical heritage and dignity of slaves. Keywords: Dehumanization, Freedom, Identity, Memory, Power/ Truth, Slavery, Subjectivity, Subversion