Summary of the Underground Railroad by Instaread

Author:. Instaread [Instaread]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Instaread
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ridgeway

Cora’s principal antagonist, Ridgeway, is the most broadly drawn character in The Underground Railroad. He’s a legend in his own time, so widely feared that slave mothers use his name to scare their children into behaving. A self-made bogeyman, he built his reputation by playing up the theater of his profession, such as when he makes a big show of burning down an abolitionist’s house to demonstrate his cruelty. Privately, he doesn’t seem to have a particular affinity for violence.

Ridgeway treats the slaves he captures more humanely than his colleagues. Some of his behavior, such as keeping his runaways fed, seems to stem from a desire for his own personal comfort while traveling. Other behavior, like his strange sense of chivalry towards female captives, is more difficult to explain. He becomes enraged when Boseman tries to rape Cora, for instance, and attacks him viciously. This behavior isn’t borne out of kindness or respect. He makes a point of using dehumanizing language as he hunts his human prey; he refers to runaway slaves as “it,” as though they were inanimate objects, and borrows the word “bucks” from the animal world to refer to black men.

Ridgeway is an eccentric, but since he’s larger than life, his peculiarity is made visible and accentuated by his crew instead of his own behavior. His hired hand wears a necklace made out of ears, and his driver is a fastidiously dressed black child. Ridgeway is very good at his job; his excellent tracking skills are aided by spot-on intuition. His continued success in his pursuit of Cora isn’t particularly believable, nor does it seem like it’s meant to be.

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