The Railway Children

Fiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 1906

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Setting

Although exiled to the countryside due to their father’s imprisonment, the children still maintain links to their old lives through the presence of the railway station, and in particular the Green Dragon that is their favorite train. In the novel, the countryside is a place not only of exile, but of healing. The country is where the children learn to develop emotionally and discover how it is not wealth or social status that makes a life meaningful, but friendship and moral integrity. The railway helps them maintain a sense of their old identity while also enabling them to adjust to their new lives through leading them to new friendships with characters such as the old gentleman and Mr. Perks. Because of the railway, the countryside becomes a welcoming place where the children can create both a new sense of home and of themselves. It is significant that, when the family reunion finally does take place, it is the railway station that serves as the meeting-place between Bobbie and her father—old lives and new lives are finally and fully reconnected, and the train that has brought their father back to them will presumably soon take the united family back to London once again.

Dialect

Characters like Mr. Perks and Bill the bargeman speak in dialects to draw a line between the lower and upper classes. The dropped “H” sounds in the speech of Mr. Perks, the porter, demonstrate his lower-class standing. The children witness Mr. Perks reading newspapers and the reader can assume the Porter has some education. However, the dialect used communicates that both Mr. and Mrs. Perks embody the image of what low-class households were thought to be during the Edwardian era. Bill the bargeman is another example of this representation. When Peter runs to let Bill know his barge is on fire, Bill’s language is full of hard “R” sounds, dropped vowels, and more as he sits among others at the tavern. Like with Mr. Perks, the novel illustrates his status through his speech to illustrate how lower-class individuals were viewed in the time period.

Point of View

The Railway Children is narrated by a voice that weaves in and out of the narrative to communicate that the novel is an ongoing story and that the storyteller has their own agendas in mind. This mirrors the appreciation of writing and storytelling upheld by Mother, the Russian Exile, and the old gentleman—all characters who have authority over the children, just like the narrator has authority over the entire novel. The narrator’s control of the story is oftentimes seen through the third-person narration, and other times in the side remarks about various characters, when the narrator switches to first person, using “I” to denote their feelings about characters and their actions. These asides add humor while calling attention to the narrator’s role and authority as the story’s teller.