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The Underground Railroad

 The Underground Railroad
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 TVTItem
 The Underground Railroad
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 The Underground Railroad
 The Underground Railroad
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 TheUndergroundRailroad
 The Underground Railroad
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 Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_1'); })The Underground Railroad is a 2016 novel by Colson Whitehead and winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and 2016 National Book Award.Cora is a third-generation slave on the Randall plantation on one of the sea islands of Georgia. Her life is the life of an American slave: degradation, savagery, misery, despair. Her mother, Mabel, is the only slave to have ever escaped from the Randall plantation, having disappeared when Cora was ten, her fate unknown, leaving Cora all alone.Cora has been something of a social outcast among the slaves ever since she was orphaned. Her isolation only increases after she intervenes in the caning of a slave named Chester. Soon after that James Randall, the passively evil owner of the plantation, dies, and is succeeded by his much more actively malevolent brother Terrance. Thus, when a slave named Caesar approaches Cora and invites her to make an escape attempt with him, she does. They then go on the Underground Railroad—which in this novel is a literal underground railroad, with locomotives on subterranean tracks, bearing slaves to freedom in the north.Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_mobile_ad_2'); })In 2021, the novel was adapted to a Prime Video series, directed by Barry Jenkins and starring Thuso Mbedu as Cora.
 The Underground Railroad
fetched
 2021-07-28T04:54:38Z
 The Underground Railroad
parsed
 2021-07-28T04:54:38Z
 The Underground Railroad
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 DBTropes
 The Underground Railroad / int_7eb2bc15
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 Ambiguous Time Period
 The Underground Railroad / int_7eb2bc15
comment
 Ambiguous Time Period: The ads for fugitive slaves (real ones from contemporary newspapers) are from all different years, 1820, 1839, etc. The Anachronism Stew further confuses the time period. Some characters in the book live long enough to see World War I, suggesting a time no earlier than the 1840s or 1850s.
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 The Underground Railroad / int_a86069f
type
 Alternate History
 The Underground Railroad / int_a86069f
comment
 Alternate History: First there's making the Underground Railroad an actual underground railroad. The book also makes further changes to history for the sake of symbolism. For example, in South Carolina the state is buying slaves from owners and putting them to work, something that didn't happen in real life, The state of North Carolina banned slavery...and also banned all black people.
 The Underground Railroad / int_a86069f
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 1.0
 The Underground Railroad / int_a86069f
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 1.0
 The Underground Railroad
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 The Underground Railroad / int_name
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 ItemName
 The Underground Railroad / int_name
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 The Underground Railroad / int_name
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 1.0
 The Underground Railroad / int_name
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 1.0
 The Underground Railroad
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 The Underground Railroad / int_name
 The Underground Railroad / int_name
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 The Underground Railroad

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 The Underground Railroad
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 African-American Media / int_b744a74d
 The Underground Railroad
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 Underground Railroad / int_b744a74d