The Underground Railroad: Chapter 5: Stevens Summary & Analysis

A man named Aloysius Stevens works night shifts on fellowship at the Anatomy House of the Proctor Medical School in Boston. Someone called Carpenter arrives at midnight along with an associate and offers Stevens a sip of liquor. The narrative zooms out to explain that Carpenter is a grave robber; if caught, he will be hanged, and his body donated to medical research. Carpenter does it, though, because there has been a “body shortage” since the study of anatomy took off. Professional body snatchers sell corpses to medical schools, and Stevens heard a rumor that Carpenter even sold the bodies of his two dead children. Body snatchers tend to be prone to drinking and ruthless behavior, and Carpenter sometimes conducts elaborate stunts that let him sell the same body twice. Eventually, once the body theft game became notorious, snatchers like Carpenter began to stick to taking the bodies of black people, who had no power to fight back. Stevens dislikes racism and, as a poor Irishman, actually feels a certain affinity with black people; however, he knows it is necessary to use their bodies in order to advance medical knowledge.