The Horrors Of Slavery In Colson Whitehead's 'The Underground Railroad'

From the time our country 's children start grade school they are learning about America’s history-- but is what they are learning about all a story from the past or do our country 's past mistakes continue on into current day? Every U.S history textbook covers the civil war, slavery, and the underground railroad, it is a staple in any modern day history class. Many of the horrors of slavery are addressed in Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Underground Railroad”, a fictional novel that takes us through the attempted escape of the protagonist Cora, a slave born and raised on a plantation in Georgia. Despite what the average person believes, the stories from the novel and our history books are not in the past-- but can be shown in what is considered modern-day slavery- better known under the term “human-trafficking”. Most Americans couldn’t fathom that something as horrific as slavery could still exist in our current day; we fought a whole war trying to abolish it but the horrors of dehumanization continue. While steps have been made to eradicate slavery since the civil war, the issue of slavery and human-trafficking will arguably never go away. Whitehead’s novel presents an inside view on the terrors of slavery; while following the main character Cora the reader is given the chance to picture slavery, a concept that many times feels like a fictional story. A book like “The Underground Railroad” is important because it doesn’t sugarcoat anything- what one sees is what they get