The Underground Railroad: Metaphors 2 key examples

The scene at the town square is the first time Cora meets Fiona, whose cruelty belies the innocence of her “freckled apple” face. In an immediate sense, the servant’s youthfulness makes her betrayal that much more surprising.

The twist is even more unexpected, though, because Fiona herself is trapped in a social position that is hardly any higher than Cora’s. This confrontation between enslaved and servant invites a broader comparison between two different forms of labor that have each influenced American history. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, slavery often flourished alongside servitude. Some of the earliest settlements and plantations turned to indentured servants, who were forced to work because of outstanding debts and also received harsh punishments at the whim of their masters. An influx of European immigrants would continue supplying some regions with a cheap labor force throughout later centuries. As Martin explains, this resemblance between servitude and slavery inspires the town’s plan to employ white laborers for picking cotton.

But servitude differs crucially from slavery in that its members have the chance of attaining freedom. Fiona has the chance to rise through the ranks in society someday—Cora does not. Servitude is not enslavement. If anything, history suggests that it may have even contributed to the institution of slavery: the rising costs of indentured servants partly motivated plantation owners to purchase slaves in the 17th century. 

Cora notes this antagonism, observing that the white underclass will eventually become “allies of the southern system that nurtured them.” Once freed from the lower class, servants like Fiona will simply subscribe to the status quo and perpetuate the injustices that they had formerly suffered. In many ways, Martin and Ethel’s maid is already performing this: she turns in her employers hoping to win ransom for betrayal. Rather than empathizing, she has used her power merely to inflict suffering upon others. Instead of uplifting, Fiona oppresses. This servant-slave pairing exposes the divisions within America’s lower classes and critiques a society that encourages its members to buy into its own backstabbing logic.

The metaphor evocatively captures the night riders’ bloodthirstiness and tethers Cora’s escape as part of a far greater struggle for freedom. Likening the vigilante members to hungry sharks, the work imaginatively articulates the stakes of survival—Cora’s hopes of freedom rest on little more than “thin planks.” More importantly, this comparison links her experiences to those of her grandmother. Its specific maritime emphasis recalls the perils of the Middle Passage, in which millions of enslaved people lost their lives through disease, malnourishment, and neglect. Traders often threw the dead bodies into the water, where they were consumed by sharks. Other enslaved passengers frequently committed suicide—one of the only ways of escaping their enslavers—by diving overboard, where they shortly drowned.

Introducing the sea into this North Carolina town stitches Cora’s own story to those of generations before her. Cora’s escape is a radical attempt at reclaiming freedom that draws implicit parallels to Ajarry’s own experiences. Like all those who jumped ship, Cora has wagered everything on the slim chances of successfully evading death. Even decades after the height of the slave trade, the metaphor suggests that the most desperate, defiant bids for freedom still bring the near-certain risk of death.