Analyzing Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad

You will be analyzing Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. You will be expected to discuss the modern
novelistic form as well the thematic and discursive meaning of the work. Your essay must be formatted correctly and
written clearly. If you struggle with grammar, please seek help from me, from your peers, and from other resources
available on campus.

Essay Features:
Length: 5 Full pages, 1250 words
Formatting: MLA style
Essay Topic Prompts (Choose One)
1. Analyze the genre of the novel, specifically its combination of both fictionalized history and satirical fabulation, in the
representation of the underground railroad.
2. Dissect the episodic plot of the novel, its cycles of adventure and danger, complications and reversals, and the
cathartic climax, for its dramatizing of the themes of unfreedom, struggle, and survival.
3. Choose a recurring symbol or imagistic leitmotifs in the novel such as machines, festivals, buildings, or landscapes to probe its connotations and resonances for understanding the conflict between oppression and resistance.
4. Analyze the characterization of Cora and Arnold Ridgeway as three-dimensional foils, their contradictions and
ambiguities that pit complex virtue against nuanced vice, illusion against reality, tyranny against escape.
5. Examine both the reliability and unreliability of the narrative point of view of Cora, the subtlety of her reflections as
well as the way her memory shapes her perceptions and perspectives.

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