Date of Award
5-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department/Program
English
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Jeffrey Gonzalez
Committee Member
Melinda Knight
Committee Member
Adam Rzpeka
Abstract
In this thesis I examine how Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad attempts to denounce a system of racial capitalism, but the various tactics used to achieve this are often clouded in an inadvertent participation in this system regardless. I contend that this participation is indicative of a particular reading’s predominance in our current American social context that nevertheless reinforces the racial capitalism the novel attempts to denounce. This inescapable reading is explored in the sections devoted to the various states the protagonist Cora travels to on her journey toward supposed freedom from bondage, as each state represents various iterations of racism she endures. Before that, I explore the debate surrounding the role race plays in American society, as the way in which a reader understands this role deeply impacts how specific moments in the novel are read. I then track the dominant treatment of the neo-slave narrative, where even Whitehead’s potential subversion of it goes easily unnoticed because of the aforementioned reading’s predominance. Lastly, I conclude by arguing that the novel is most richly read when the reader adopts both a sympathy for and awareness beyond racial categories.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Marx, Daniel Paul, "Racial Capitalism in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad" (2023). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1307.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1307