Previous
Boseman
John is the owner of Valentine farm and the husband of Gloria. He is light-skinned and passes for white, although he does not hide the fact that he is black among other black people. After escaping the south with his family, John dedicates his life to helping other black people, telling Cora: “White man ain’t going to do it. We have to do it ourselves.” After his farm is destroyed, John and his family resettle in Oklahoma.
John Valentine Quotes in The Underground Railroad
The The Underground Railroad quotes below are all either spoken by John Valentine or refer to John Valentine. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 10: Indiana Quotes
Cora had come to cherish the impossible treasures of the Valentine farm so completely that she'd forgotten how impossible they were. The farm and the adjacent ones operated by colored interests were too big, too prosperous. A pocket of blackness in the young state. Valentine's negro heritage became known years before. Some felt tricked that they'd treated a nigger as an equal and then to have that uppity nigger shame them with his success.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Underground Railroad LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
John Valentine Character Timeline in The Underground Railroad
The timeline below shows where the character John Valentine appears in The Underground Railroad. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 10: Indiana
There is no consumption of alcohol on Valentine except for on Saturday nights. John Valentine himself has lost count of how many people live on the farm; there are...
(full context)
...was simply good fortune that his master would agree to such a thing. Sometimes people John Valentine calls “dignitaries”—wealthy people from the north—visit the farm, but there are none there tonight,...
(full context)
John Valentine passes as white, but black people recognize his Ethiopian features. His father, a white...
(full context)
One day, John joins Cora in the library. Cora is ashamed by her debt to him so she...
(full context)
Cora realizes that she has forgotten how precarious life at Valentine is. She tells John that, the week before, a group of white men yelled vulgar abuse at her and...
(full context)
...There are no white people there, although there are some visitors from neighboring black farms. John begins his speech by explaining that his white-passing privilege allowed him to grow up without...
(full context)
