The Train From Rhodesia

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1952

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Literary Devices

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is the ascribing of human attributes to inanimate or non-human objects. In this story, both the train and the carved animals that the vendors sell are depicted as if they are human. The train is described as “gasping” as if it has lungs, and as dragging its “dwindling body” into the station (43). As the train pulls away at the end of the story, the carved animals are seen “questioning for the last time at the windows” (46), as if they are selling themselves.

Conversely, the vendors selling the carved animals are compared to “performing animals,” while the mute staring passengers on the train evoke the faces of animals. These metaphors express the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, along with the disproportionate value that a capitalist society puts on machines and objects.

Close Omniscient Perspective

A close omniscient perspective is both wide-ranging and limited. The story is told in the third person, implying an all-seeing observer; yet there are narrow limits to how much the observer knows.

We do not have access to the thoughts and feelings of most of the characters. We see them as we see people in real life, through their actions and appearances. The one character to whose thoughts we have access is the newlywed wife on the train. She is estranged from her husband and her surroundings; she is suspicious of her status as a tourist and knows herself to be ignorant of the world outside of the train.

Yet her perspective, for all its limitations, has authority. She is free of illusion and knows her ignorance. While she cannot tell us much about her surroundings, she can tell us how they make her feel. Her private confusion echoes the larger confusion of the setting so that she can be seen as a microcosm of her society.

Repetition

At the beginning of the story, and again in the very last line, the train is described as calling “I’m coming, I’m coming” to the sky, and receiving no answer (47). This repetition suggests a train whistle itself, making the same noise over and over; it also suggests a refrain in a poem or a chorus in a song, one that takes on greater weight and meaning as it is repeated.

At the beginning of the story, the image of a train calling out and receiving no answer is slightly absurd and comical. It suggests a large clumsy creature that is ignorant of its surroundings, even while dominating these surroundings. The train first “calls out” as it is pulling into the station, and its call is unnecessary because its appearance is already so disruptive and dramatic. The second time it is as an announcement of its departure; it is therefore a much lonelier sound, and it echoes the estrangement and loneliness of the scene that has just been described. The train has “cast the station off like a skin,” and its call is now aimed only at the sky (47). It no longer seems oversized and blundering but powerless and small.