Colson Whitehead and Metaphors

October 5, 2026

Colson Whitehead showed us the power of metaphors as properly applied to works of fiction when he made masterful use of them in his recent novels: The Underground Railroad and The Intuitionist.

In The Underground Railroad, Whitehead takes the metaphorical slavery railroad—the process employed by abolitionists to transport slaves from the South to the North along a “railroad”—and turns it into an actual subterranean railroad of tunnels, tracks, and train stations, which are presented as womb-like, tomb-like metaphors. As the train moves from slave state to slave state in his novel, the evils of slavery are revealed: one state showing Black advancement in a society that is under the control of white masters; one state demonstrating the genocide of white supremacy; and still another state showing the fragility of Black self-determination as freed slaves fight to exist amid the period’s violence.

He uses elevators in The Intuitionist to answer a fundamental question. Who is allowed to rise—to advance—in American society? The stories of his characters represent the hurdles of social mobility, racial advancement, class aspiration, and transcendence. The story of his Empiricist characters’ fight against the Intuitionists is a metaphor describing the battle between white institutional authority and marginalized intuition. And his “perfect elevator” is seen by many to represent the unattainability of racial equality in the United States.

In both novels Whitehead seems to be wanting us to ask ourselves whether it is feasible for Black Americans to successfully move through a rigged system. His liberal use of metaphors helps us understand the perplexities involved in answering that question.