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Traditional slave narrative mostly concentrates on the brutality of slavery and themiserable lives of slaves under the peculiar regime. In order to make peopleunderstand the importance of abolishing slavery by explaining the brutalities andinhumanities of slavery as well as the wretched lives of slaves under the peculiarsystem. Davis and Gates comment that “their printed texts are structured formalrevisions of their spoken words organized and promoted by anti-slavery organizations”(1985: xvi). However, neo-slave narrative is written for different purpose. Accordingto Smith, many neo-slave narratives turn to “the story of slavery as a lens throughwhich to examine contemporary issues” (2007:173). As neo-slave narrative writer,Toni Morrison, who wrote history for black people, believes that race is a worthysubject. In a sense, Whitehead has taken up the banner of his predecessor, ToniMorrison. Whitehead is not only concerned with the re-emergence of the history ofslavery, but also points out that the racial problems still exist in contemporaryAmerica. The Underground Railroad is a widely related echo of trauma, violence and memory in American history and culture in the presentation of the history of slavery.

The Underground Railroad is a fiction novel, but the barriers between fiction andnonfiction are not clear-cut. Whitehead skillfully intertwines history and imagination,allowing the story to span a grand span of space. When writing the novel, Whiteheadarchives and read slave narratives from the 19th century, namely those first-personaccounts of slavery collected by the Federal Writers’ Project, because he tries to writethe real history of slavery in a fictional way. He spent sixteen years collecting material.As evidence, in the acknowledgments, the author lists the documents he consulted onslavery, race relations, and the secret organization about the underground railroad.Whitehead constructs a history of black racial persecution that is either vacant ordeliberately obscure in American history, where blacks have remained silent in thefictional history of mainstream society. The novel also shows the different brutalatrocities against the blacks and the deep-rooted racism in the country through eachstate in Cora’s escape. He exposes America’s original sin, namely slavery and thehistory of violence about blacks’ lynching experience, genocide of the black, and thensubverts the myth of the American dream.

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1.2 Reinterpretation of Black Women’s Quest for Freedom

The traditional slave narratives emphasize “escape from slavery” and “gainingfreedom,” while Whitehead wants to consider not only the form of gaining freedom,but also how to define freedom from physical and mental levels.

In the novel, freedom is mentioned many times. Each female character interpretsher own understanding of freedom from different perspective interprets. First of all,The Underground Railroad shifts from black men’s quest for freedom to blackwome本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。