"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable."
T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton," The Four Quartets
As I was finishing Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, a passage from the chapter "Ridgeway" kept creeping into my thoughts. Ridgeway is the unique villain of this novel, much more than the "catcher" role he plays rounding up freedom seeking slaves. He, in fact, belongs to a rich tradition of such chilling characters created by American authors (more on that later)—they embrace their villainy and disparage those who think they are better than villains. The narrator is inside Ridgeway's mind, summarizing Ridgeway's perspective of the American experience:
"They'd never seen the likes of this, but they'd leave their mark on this new land,
as surely as those famous souls at Jamestown, making it theirs through unstoppable
racial logic. If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains.
If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man
wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.
Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor—if
you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American
imperative."
What's chilling in this perspective are not only its hubris and dismissiveness, but also its exclusion of human dignity. Of all the "catchers" and "patrollers" that dog the terrified slaves' efforts to survive and resurrect their personhood, Ridgeway prevails right up to the last chapter and is forever ensconced in the mind of Cora, the central character. As he remains in ours, for we know him very well.
He is Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger, Melville's Confidence Man, and Flannery O'Connor's Misfit. But those are only a few of his literary likenesses. We know Ridgeway each time we hear our fellow citizens and leaders justify the exploitation of others in the name of proprietariness and expedience. We know him each time we hear and read about slavery as the "peculiar institution" and about Native Americans as beneficiaries of European largesse.
One characteristic of "American exceptionalism" is the ease with which we erase the unattractive and cruel events in our history. We, in fact, are internationally renown for our short and long term memory loss. And we ought to be grateful for Colson Whitehead's intensely vivid reminder of exactly what is essentially our heritage, our American imperative.
We are what we are. Whatever we tell ourselves our values are and however we imagine the brilliant light our City on a Hill shines across the globe, we cannot shake the Great Spirit that guides us—if you can keep it, it's yours.
And think for a moment how this underscores the bizarre political season we are experiencing. This is why I led this post with the quotation from Eliot. It is safe to say that Donald Trump and, especially, the millions of his true believers embody the American imperative. We seem to have come to a point in the movement of our society where, indeed, all time and the baggage contained within it are unredeemable.
For me, this is the message of The Underground Railroad. The metaphor of the novel is not so much escape for Cora and all the thousands of others in 19th century America. The metaphor is about America's unredeemable time.
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable."
T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton," The Four Quartets
As I was finishing Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, a passage from the chapter "Ridgeway" kept creeping into my thoughts. Ridgeway is the unique villain of this novel, much more than the "catcher" role he plays rounding up freedom seeking slaves. He, in fact, belongs to a rich tradition of such chilling characters created by American authors (more on that later)—they embrace their villainy and disparage those who think they are better than villains. The narrator is inside Ridgeway's mind, summarizing Ridgeway's perspective of the American experience:
"They'd never seen the likes of this, but they'd leave their mark on this new land,
as surely as those famous souls at Jamestown, making it theirs through unstoppable
racial logic. If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains.
If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man
wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.
Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor—if
you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American
imperative."
What's chilling in this perspective are not only its hubris and dismissiveness, but also its exclusion of human dignity. Of all the "catchers" and "patrollers" that dog the terrified slaves' efforts to survive and resurrect their personhood, Ridgeway prevails right up to the last chapter and is forever ensconced in the mind of Cora, the central character. As he remains in ours, for we know him very well.
He is Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger, Melville's Confidence Man, and Flannery O'Connor's Misfit. But those are only a few of his literary likenesses. We know Ridgeway each time we hear our fellow citizens and leaders justify the exploitation of others in the name of proprietariness and expedience. We know him each time we hear and read about slavery as the "peculiar institution" and about Native Americans as beneficiaries of European largesse.
One characteristic of "American exceptionalism" is the ease with which we erase the unattractive and cruel events in our history. We, in fact, are internationally renown for our short and long term memory loss. And we ought to be grateful for Colson Whitehead's intensely vivid reminder of exactly what is essentially our heritage, our American imperative.
We are what we are. Whatever we tell ourselves our values are and however we imagine the brilliant light our City on a Hill shines across the globe, we cannot shake the Great Spirit that guides us—if you can keep it, it's yours.
And think for a moment how this underscores the bizarre political season we are experiencing. This is why I led this post with the quotation from Eliot. It is safe to say that Donald Trump and, especially, the millions of his true believers embody the American imperative. We seem to have come to a point in the movement of our society where, indeed, all time and the baggage contained within it are unredeemable.
For me, this is the message of The Underground Railroad. The metaphor of the novel is not so much escape for Cora and all the thousands of others in 19th century America. The metaphor is about America's unredeemable time.
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