44 pages • 1 hour read
Barbara SmuckerUnderground To Canada
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Evil Chains
The author uses chains to represent the cruelty and violence of slave owners and the whole system of slavery. Barbara Smucker repeatedly refers to chains in the story, emphasizing the suffering and indignity they caused to enslaved people. For instance, Lester, Ben, and Adam are attached to the slave trader’s wagon with “torturing chains,” which force them to run behind the wagon and create wounds on their legs (28). Smucker compares this chain to a “silver snake” to further associate it with evil and the Edenic motif.
Later, when Adam and Lester are recaptured, Julilly is haunted by the “clanking” chains that signal their return to captivity and enslavement (82). Ultimately, Adam’s experience of being chained kills him through blood poisoning. By making chains responsible for Adam’s death, Smucker connects their violence and cruelty with its terrible consequences for enslaved people. Alexander Ross blames the chains for Adam’s death: “‘It was the chains.’ His voice was husky. ‘They were too tight and cut through the flesh. When we filed them off, there was blood poisoning’” (123). The human-made chains, described as snakes, represent the violence and dehumanization of chattel slavery and introduce evil into the natural world.
Birds and Freedom
In Underground to Canada, Barbara Smucker uses birds as a symbol of freedom. Julilly imagines freedom by thinking about a whippoorwill: “Free, thought Julilly. Free must be like a whippoorwill that could fly here and there and settle where it pleased” (51). Smucker associates her characters’ happiness and sense of freedom with birds and birdsong. While on the run, Julilly enjoys a rare moment of peace by the river and hears a mockingbird’s tune: “A mockingbird sailed through the sky, then perched above her and sang its own clear song” (67). However, when the slave hunters’ dogs approach, the mockingbird quickly leaves. In another scene, Julilly and Liza are happily settling into their hiding place in the barn when a mockingbird sings in the trees nearby. When the slave hunters arrive, the bird disappears, implying that the slave hunters are the antithesis of the happiness and freedom that the bird represents: “The mockingbird flew away, leaving the sky for a moment empty of its song. But the emptiness filled with the cries and shouts of men and of whips” (81).
Moreover, the conductors on the Underground Railroad use bird sounds to communicate with each other. For instance, Alexander Ross uses three whippoorwill calls to signal to Julilly and her friends, and Levi Coffin uses a hoot owl call to communicate with his friend on the other side of the Ohio River. By including these bird calls throughout the novel, Smucker associates these heroic conductors with this symbol of freedom and implies that with each stage of her journey Julilly gets closer to finding her own freedom.
The North Star
The North Star represents the hope of enslaved people. Throughout the novel enslaved characters discuss how by following the North Star they could reach Canada—and freedom from slavery. Mammy Sally tells Julilly to follow the North Star to Canada, saying, “They say you travel north and follow the North Star, and when you step onto this land you are free” (15). Julilly clings to this advice when she is separated from her mother, imagining a hopeful future the star represents. Smucker writes, “Mammy Sally said this country was a place where slaves were free and it was a place where they would meet. It lay there waiting beneath the big North Star” (43).
Julilly treasures the presence of the North Star in the night sky while she is on the Riley plantation. She and Liza look for the star together, gazing at the “black sky above the slave quarters until they found the brightest one” (43). The girls continue to be encouraged by the star as they travel through the wilderness. Julilly says, “If that North Star wasn’t up there steady, beckonin’ to us […] I couldn’t go on” (95).
