(this is the English translation of the Italian review I published in January)
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead is not a book that "gets" you immediately, but nevertheless it will gradually take you page after page... in short, it was an engaging read that gave me the opportunity to realize and "observe" one of the less glorious pages of American history (which is still in progress!!).
There are 3 characteristics that I found important and that I would like to emphasize: the style, the message, the symbols.
THE STYLE is dry and essential: if there is a book where the advice "don't miss a word" must be respected, this is it. In the chapters titles personal names and states names alternate (Ajarry, Georgia, Ridgeway, South Carolina,...) secluding the moments of psychological study from the description of the escape. The tone is actually different: in the former there is emotion and empathy, in the latter there is none. All this (writing and structure) allows to convey the message.
THE MESSAGE is simple and obvious, but it is carried with strength and resolve by style: slavery takes humanity away from human beings. Humanity lacks in the slaves: treated like cattle, they end up losing the empathy that could unite them in a compact group against the adversities that rage against the color of their skin. Humanity lacks in the whites (both the bosses and the "collaborators"): the cultural and social abyss that separates whites and blacks (slaves or... "freedmen") is so great that any effort at empathy is pathetic; therefore relationships remain mechanical and utilitarian even when guided by the best of intentions. It is in this "inhuman" context that the symbols burst with force and create emotions more than the characters adventures.
SYMBOLS are overturned or reinterpreted:
- The Declaration of Independence, with its "all men are created equal", made to recite in slave s school, to teach them to read and write, becomes an instrument of repression: a memento that... not all men are equal.
- The Bible and the Christian religion, used by both slaveholders and collaborators as a justification for their actions (the former identify the lineage of Cain in the blacks, justifying slavery, the latter seek the salvation promised by Christ by bringing help to "those in need" ), are emptied of their moral value since all teachings of charity and acceptance are forgotten.
- Concerning the railway (hence the title!), the author does not reverse the meaning, but swaps the beneficiaries. If "on the surface" it is a symbol of the American dream, of modernity, of the industrial abilities of the white man, underground is the only work the black man will be proud of (unlike the work in the fields, done by blacks, but source of white pride and wealth), and it represents the black man's own means of achieving the same American dream of freedom and independence.
And this is all. Happy reading (if I have convinced you).
