AICE LIT paper 2:

How did fugitive slaves travel on the Underground Railroad?

They traveled most often on foot and in wagons, but were also known to be transported in coaches, trains, steamships, and skiffs.

What were people called who led "passengers" to freedom on the Underground Railroad, and were considered to have the most dangerous job?

Conductors

What law enacted in 1793 permitted a master or professional bounty hunters, called slave catchers, to seize runaways, even in a free state?

Fugitive Slave Law

True/False:
Slaves were taught how to read and write.

False; it was illegal in many states to educate enslaved people.

How does Royal die?

He is shot during the raid on the Valentine farm.

What criminal activity did Dr. Stevens participate in while he was in medical school?

grave robbing

What did Ethel Wells dream of being when she was a child, before her father convinced her to be a teacher instead?

a african missionary

What happened to Mabel?

She was bitten by a snake while trying to return to the Randall plantation.

What is Cora's job at the Museum of Natural Wonders and what state?

She is an "actor" in live exhibits & South Carolina

What is the final destination of the wagon Cora is riding on at the novel's end?

California

What makes Cora decide to leave South Carolina?

She learns that Ridgeway has found her.

Why did Cora destroy Blake's doghouse with a hatchet on the Ridgeway Plantation?

He dug up her garden and built the doghouse on her plot of land.

Why did Martin Wells decide to start working for the underground railroad?

His father's death wish was for Martin to take over his abolitionist work.

Why does Ridgeway shoot Jasper?

Ridgeway gets irritated by Jasper's singing.

Why doesn't Lovey make it to the underground railroad station with Cora and Caesar?

She is captured when the fugitives are ambushed by hog hunters.

Why doesn't Mingo like having people such as Cora living on the Valentine farm?

Cora is a fugitive, and he worries that harboring fugitives will make white people angry.

Why doesn't Ridgeway return Cora to Georgia immediately?

He plans to capture another fugitive slave rumored to be living in Missouri.

Why is Ridgeway so eager to catch Cora?

He never succeeded in catching Cora's mother, Mabel.

What was the name of the port on the Gold Coast of Africa where Ajarry was sold into slavery?

Ouidah

How did Ajarry die?

Anaeurysm

What were the two main crops of the different plantations where Ajarry worked as a slave BEFORE Randall?

sugar and indigo

Which type of slaves lived in the Hob cabin?

Outcasts

Why did Blake want to take over Cora's vegetable garden?

To put his dog house there

How does the slave community react to Cora's defense of her vegetable garden?

They spread rumors about her, sexually harass her, and make her an outcast.

Why does Caesar say he wants Cora to run away with him?

He thinks she is a good luck charm

Why does Cora eventually decide to agree to run away with Caesar?

Terrance Randall took control of the northern half of the plantation and squeezed her breasts in public.

How does Lovey surprise Cora?

She catches up with Cora and Caesar wanting to escape with them.

How were the slave catchers alerted of Cora and Caesar's escape attempt?

Lovey's mother notice their absence and an overseer got the story out of her.

How do Cora and Caesar escape Mr. Fletcher's house?

With a blanket

How does Cora feel about her escape so far?

every moment of freedom is worth it

How does Ridgeway's father feel about his work as a blacksmith?

it's a callling

How does Ridgeway react when he sees a big city for the first time?

he throws up

What is the approach Ridgeway takes to slave catching that makes him so successful?

he pictures he is running away from you

How does Ridgeway feel about beating up the abolitionist August Carter?

sastify and pleased

What does Ridgeway think about the Underground Railroad operating in Georgia?

Wants it gone

What is Cora's first job in South Carolina?

Working as a nanny for the Anderson family

Why has Cora been inside the Griffin Building?

She took the children to see their father, who works on the eight floor of the building.

What is Sam's attitude towards Cora and Caesar when he meets them for the first time?

delighted and happy that they arrived

What is Cora and Caesar's new falsified legal status in South Carolina?

They are slaves own by the government

What does the small plot of land represent?

Cora's heritage, sense of ownership and family

What is the Hob house?

It is on the Randall Plantation and it the female quarters for women who seem to be "misfits".

Who is Homer?

He is the slave that Ridgeway buys and frees. He is an odd character. who chooses to stay with Ridgeway.

What is the Freedom Trail?

It is a trail in Indiana where black bodies are hung to discourage entrance into the state. It is also a symbol of the never-ending sight to slavery and it's repercussions.

What does the term antebellum refer to?

The period of time before the Civil War

What is an 'abolitionist'? What did they do and how?

They were people against slavery. They helped educate people about the immorality of the institution by helping free run- aways, printing newspaper articles, touring and speaking out loud, as well as protesting.

What does it mean to identify something?

To be able to name and point out.

Where does the story end?

No one really knows

Who follows and eventually catches up to Caesar and Cora?

Lovey follows Caesar and Cora and eventually catches up to them.

How did Lovey was running away?

She guessed that Cora was running away when she saw her sneaking around on the Randall Plantation with Caesar, "but not talking about it" along with "dig up them yams not even ripe yet!”

How do they decide to travel from Fletcher's? What time of day?

They decide to travel from Fletchers during the night by riding in the back of his cart with their slaves covered by "a Hessian blanket" (64).

What do you think of Cora not having compassion for the injured boy (who may die) that she fought with during the escape?

Cora has the right to not have compassion for the injured boy because he ultimately put her in danger and tried to kill her.

What is the name of the "station agent"? What has he collected?

• Lumbly

• Collected horses

Describe Arnold Ridgeway at age "fourteen when he took up with patrollers".

• When he "took up with patrollers", Arnold Ridgeway was a "burly and resolute" fourteen year old boy who stood at "six and a half feet tall".

• He "beat his fellows when he spied his weaknesses in them" and "was young for patrol" (76).

What do patrollers do?

• hunt and catch slaves

• storm plantations and made them stop showing passes

• No matter if they were free, they made them stop for fun to remind them of the forces they faced.

• severely beat the workers

How is it symbolic that Ridgeway becomes ill as he goes further north on his first journey to New Jersey?

As he goes further north on his first journey to New Jersey, it is symbolic that Ridgeway becomes ill because he is not used to traveling North and is used to staying in the deep South. His body is reacting to an illness that he caught while he was traveling North and the reader is expected to know that the North is unfamiliar territory to Ridgeway, whereas the South is familiar territory.

Who is August Carter, and why does Ridgeway treat him the way he does?

• August Carter was a shopkeeper in Delaware and also an abolitionist.

• Ridgeway treats August the way he does because he severely hit Carter and his wife as well as set his house on fire.

Who are the Andersons?

• The Andersons live in an old-fashioned home at the intersection of Washington and Main Street.

• Mr. Anderson is a contractor in the cotton trade while

• Mrs. Anderson is a family doctor. They both enjoy their evening relaxation time with each other.

Who is Bessie?

-Bessie is Cora
-She is the Andersons' nanny who takes care of the children, prepares the family meals, and tidies up the house.
-She is living more free than she previously was in South Carolina and worked with Sam to help change her identity.

Who are Maisie and Raymond?

Maisie and Raymond are the two children who live in the Anderson household.

Why is the Griffin Building so impressive to Bessie?

• The Griffin Building is so impressive to Bessie because it is the only real building that Bessie had seen.

• It symbolizes progression and the freedom to create, which makes it contrast from the Randall Plantation, and also represents a different livelihood.

Why does Miss Lucy correct Bessie when she calls the dormitory the quarter on page 91?

• On page 91, Miss Lucy corrects Bessie when she calls the dormitory the quarter because she wants her to remember that this is a place where she can grow as an individual and learn new things.

Describe Sam.

Sam is the station agent who has devoted his life to helping runaway slaves.

He sets up a new life for them with fake names, housing, backstory, food, and a job. He also has flexible work times, connections, and gives a new identity.

What is different about slavery in South Carolina than Georgia? See pages 94-95.

Slavery was much different in South Carolina than Georgia because these slaves had the freedom to do things that they were not able to do in Georgia.

They were able to have food to eat and never starve, get jobs and be employed, receive affordable housing, marry whoever they wanted to, and start their own families and raise their own children that were never taken away from them or sold off.

What does the Swamp symbolize?

• can hide/harm them (no mans land)

• not freedom, but possibility

• characters knowledge cant save them from its dangers (mabel)

What does the Almanacs symbolize?

(HINT: book containing calender dates,weeks,months and rising & setting of sun and moon, tide changes)

• represent oras hopes for the future

• bring Cora comfort in Martin’s attic

• they’re so important to Cora that Royal gifts her one

• used spiritually for charts of the moon as “prayers for runaways as the full moon gives light to runaways”

What does the Garden Plot Cora inherited symbolize?

• Represents independence & stability

• Loss and instability have marked her life since she was kidnapped (Ajarry)

• Where she grows her own food beyond rations she’s given and a area SHE owns. (Ajarry)

• Ajarry passes it down to Mabel, then Mabel to Cora

• represents an inheritance that connects them and gives stability to their lives, even as the plantation changes

• Cora even risks her life for the plot as Blake builds that dog house.

• described as “the most valuable land in all of Georgia.”

What does the Motif Festivals represent?

• used to reveal the rules and character of the places Cora lives

• known to be dangerous

KNOW AT LEAST 2 EX:

• ex: birthdays on plantation & reveal for how slavery takes aspects of the identities of the enslaved from them

• ex: North Carolina, Friday Festivals emphasize the rules of white supremacy, with speeches, plays in blackface, and public hangings of Black people and those who try to help them.

• ex: Valentine farm hosts regular gatherings to build community (although their last was when the mob attacked and killed people)

• ex: The grotesque party Terrance holds while torturing and killing Big Anthony

What does the Motif Underground Railroad Stations represent?

• they vary to reflect the circumstances of her travels

• In Cora’s escape, she becomes the builder of the line leaving Indiana, digging the tunnel with every push of the handcar lever.

  KNOW AT LEAST 2 EX:

• ex: The barn above the station in Georgia is hung with iron shackles, symbolizing the physical bondage of plantation life

• ex: South Carolina station, with its simple table and chairs and basket of food, fits in with the regulated life of Black people in South Carolina

• ex: North Carolina is an abandoned wreck. The condition of the station mirrors the history of its station agents

• ex: Tennessee puts the others to shame, just as the prosperity and comfort of Valentine farm come as a shock to Cora.

• ex: Indiana, Royal brings Cora to the tunnel that will ultimately bring her to freedom. The ghost tunnel has no platform and is only big enough to admit a handcar. Throughout the novel, engineers tell Cora the railroad was built by the same people who build everything in America: Black people.

What does the Motif Cotton represent?

• Whitehead often compares fields of cotton to the ocean

• Ajarry dies with the cotton bolls around her like whitecaps on a rough ocean (simile)

• metaphors reflect the global nature of the cotton trade, where enslaved people raise the drop for the consumption of Europe.

• uses name “King Cotton” to the economic power and the power of cotton plantation owners to create laws ensuring enslaved labor to grow it.

• Manual Labor and is destructive to the body

• The luxury of cotton good stands in stark contrast to the labor that produces them.

What does the Theme Damage of Slavery represent?

• Ajarry’s kidnapping and repeated sale leaves her believing enslavement and the plantation represent the “fundamental principles” of her life.

• Cora consciously works to force thoughts of the plantation from her mind, which she cannot achieve completely

• Homer provides a particularly striking example of this theme. (he was free but shackled himself to the wagon he ventured on.)

• Mingo is proud to be free, but he disdains Black people who could not buy their freedom or who he thinks attract white disapproval

• Although they are free, both he and Homer ally themselves with white power structures that support slavery.

What does the Theme Connection between Literacy and Freedom represent?

• Knowledge is POWER.

• enslaved people are barred from learning to read

  KNOW AT LEAST 4 EX:

• On the Randall plantation, Connelly blinds Jacob for attempting to learn

• In South Carolina, Miss Handler tells her students that North Carolina state law would fine her and whip the students, in addition to likely punishments from a master.

• literacy is outlawed in order to make it harder for enslaved people to communicate with each other and therefore harder for them to organize revolts.

• Preventing enslaved people from reading and writing is an important aspect of control of the enslaved population, a source of great concern for whites throughout the book

• “a literate Black person was more dangerous than an armed one and compares the library there to a pile of gunpowder. “

• Caesar takes the risk of hiding a book at Randall because reading lets him feel mental freedom

• Cora and her almanacs have another association with freedom, in that Martin’s father used them to keep track of the cycles of the moon for the sake of helping those escaping slavery.

• Valentine farm value reading so highly that they build a library, a daring temple to literacy and freedom.

What does the Theme Power of Community represent?

• KNOW AT LEAST 4 EX:

• Whitehead shows examples of different ways people live together, developing a theme of the power of community

• At the Randall plantation, Connelly and the Randall’s work to prevent the enslaved people from forming a strong community.

• Scarce resources cause Ava and others jealous of Cora’s plot to turn against her after Mabel runs away.

• South Carolina, Cora sees the fear white people have of Black people forming communities.

• South Carolina uses medical experiments and forces sterilization to attempt to lower the population

• North Carolina forces them from the state and kills those who remain.

• Valentine farm in Indiana shows her how a community built on freedom and mutual uplift can create a place so strong it begins to heal the wounds of slavery, giving children space to thrive and families a chance to love each other without fear of forced separation.

• Valentine offers a model of the power of a community to create possibility.

what does RIDGEWAY represent?

• KNOW AT LEAST 3 EX:

• represents the forces of the American imperative

• He defines his role as maintaining the order of white supremacy to allow the economic expansion driven by cotton production.

• He chases Cora not because he hates her but because she and other enslaved Black people are necessary tools in his view, who grow the crop that dominates the world economy and therefore serve the manifest destiny of the U.S.A

• Cora’s fierce independence and determination stands in opposition to Ridgeway’s philosophy.

• Their conflict is fueled by her refusal to accept his vision of America, which defines her as an object rather than a person with rights of self-determination. (Cora & Ridgeway)

Explain Coras mental + physical journey escaping slavery

• At each stop in her travels, she grows stronger and freer.

  KNOW AT LEAST 3 EX:

• South Carolina, she begins to learn to read and at the same time rejects the attempts by doctors to control her body and steal her future by sterilizing her

• North Carolina, she reads almanacs that allow her to dream of a bigger world and a future she has not imagined.

• Indiana, she encounters a community so safe she begins to trust others, witnessing Sibyl and Molly as a healing example of love between a mother and child and allowing Royal to court her. (Indiana, she sees a vision of freedom she never imagined)

• Her trip through the ghost tunnel requires all the strength she has in her, but in the tunnel, she is digging, she feels the shape of a different America than the one she has known.

• When she climbs into Ollie’s wagon in the North, she wonders how long it has taken him to put his own enslavement behind him, an indication that she believes she will be able to do the same

What happens when Cora leaves the Randall plantation?

• she escapes with another slave, Caesar

• They make it to a stop on the underground railroad, but not before some locals try to capture them and Cora kills a teenage white boy in order to get away. 

Name the chronological order Cora travels to escape slavery (states)

• Georgia

• South Carolina

• North Carolina

• Tennessee

• Indiana

• St. Louis to California (escaping)

What happens while Cora in South Carolina?

• Here, Cora and Caesar are housed, fed, and given jobs.

• After working as a maid, Cora is sent to work as a “type” in a museum that puts forward a very false, positive version of African and slave life.

• Cora and Caesar learn from Sam that the hospital they thought was helping them with free medical care is actually conducting government experiments to kill off and sterilize Black people.

• Then they learn that the slave catcher, Ridgeway, has arrived in search of them. Cora escapes to the underground railroad platform

• Caesar is left behind, and Sam’s house is burned to the ground.

What happens while Cora in North Carolina?

• bad situation for black people, free or fugitive

• Cora is taken to the home of the reluctant station agent Martin Wells and his wife Edith, who is very upset by Cora’s presence

• Cora lives in a small hiding space in the Wells’ attic, where she sees a horrible spectacle take place every Friday night on the town square

• Cora improves her reading in the attic room, but there is no way out for her. Finally, Cora falls ill and has to be cared for in the Wells’ home.

• Their maid Fiona informs on them, and that Friday night a group of night riders searches the house, finding Cora.

• With the patrollers is the slave catcher, Ridgeway, who chains Cora to his wagon and takes her with him, while Edith and Martin Wells are hanged from the oak tree.

  THEMES:PHYSICAL IMPACT OF SLAVERY

What happens while Cora in Tennessee?

• Tennessee is even worse than North Carolina

• Cora is taken through the state by Ridgeway and his two companions Boseman and Homer

• The first half of Tennessee they travel through is completely blackened by wildfires. Even the white settlers have been displaced.

• Halfway into their journey, annoyed by his singing, Ridgeway shoots Jasper in the face.(

• Finally, they stop in a town where Cora is acknowledged by a young Black man wearing glasses. After Ridgeway takes Cora to dinner and tells her about Caesar’s death, they stop for the night in the woods outside of town. The slave they picked up)

• Boseman tries to rape Cora and Ridgeway punches him. At that instant, the man wearing glasses appears with two others, all armed (Royal).

• One shoots Boseman, another chases Homer, and the man with glasses fights with Ridgeway.

• Homer gets away, Ridgeway is chained to his own wagon, and Cora is rescued.

• The man with glasses is Royal, a conductor on the underground railroad, who takes Cora to Valentine farm in Indiana.

  THEMES:PHYSICAL IMPACT OF SLAVERY

What happens while Cora in Indiana?

• There she truly lives as a free woman, attending school and contributing to the life of the large farm occupied by free and escaped Black people

• She and Royal begin a romance, and she also becomes close to her housemate Sybil and Sybil’s daughter, Molly

• Valentine farm was founded by a light-skinned Black man named John Valentine, who often passed for white, and his wife Gloria.

• Every Saturday night on the farm there is a big feast followed by lectures, poetry readings, singing, and dancing. However, hostility from the nearby white community is growing as the whites feel threatened by the size of the Black community.

• Royal takes Cora on a picnic and shows her an abandoned house with an underground railroad station beneath it (handcar and narrow tunnel). She feels uneasy as she doesn’t want to leave.

• Sam appears on Valentine farm on his way to California and tells Cora that Terrance Randall is dead and no one is looking for her anymore.

• On the night that two speakers, Mingo and Lander, debate the future of Valentine farm, a white mob arrives, killing Lander and Royal and many others.

• Cora is captured by Ridgeway and Homer, who order her to take them to the underground railroad station.

• Cora takes Ridgeway to the abandoned railroad station, where she pulls him down the steps and he is mortally wounded

• Homer tends to Ridgeway while Cora pumps the handcar down the tunnel

  THEMES: POWER OF COMMUNITY, TENSION FOR SURVIVAL

What happens while Cora in St.Louis?

• She travels for miles, then walks until she emerges into daylight.

• On the trail, she encounters three covered wagons, the last one driven by an older Black man named Ollie.

• He feeds her and tells her he is going to St. Louis to join a wagon train to California.

• She joins him.

Why does Mabel try to leave her daughter behind and the plantation?

She runs away one night because she can’t face the ghosts of those killed, sold, or who committed suicide on the Randall plantation anymore.

What does the chapter of Ethel give to the story?

• tells the early story of Ethel

• As a child, Ethel dreamed of being a Christian missionary in Africa

• Ethel played with Felice’s daughter Jasmine until her father forbade it

• Ethel’s father went to Jasmine’s room regularly at night and raped her.

• Ethel became a teacher and eventually met and married Martin.

• They had a good life in Virginia, but then moved to North Carolina to settle Martin’s father Donald’s affairs

• When Martin took over Donald’s role in the underground railroad, they were stuck. Ethel was very upset about taking in the runaway slaves, which threatened her life.

• However, when Cora got sick, she softened, feeling that this was her time to realize her childhood fantasy of ministering to an African.