The Train From Rhodesia - review
The Train From Rhodesia
The story I have decided to study is "The train from Rhodesia" The author of this story is a South African woman named Nadine Gordimer. She was born in Transvaal, just outside Johannesburg, in 1923 and lived there with her Jewish father and her British mother. She received a Nobel Prize for literature in 1991 and her first story was published when she was just fourteen years old. She had only been writing for five years as she started at the age of nine.
Nadine Gordimer is admired for her modern writing and became only the eighth woman to win a Nobel Prize in its ninety-year history. She was very critical of how the white European minority controlled the black African people. Some of her writing reflects this and many of her books were banned in her native land. Quotes in the author's description give hints to what the story will involve.
"Her writing deals with the moral and psychological tensions of her racially divided home country"
Because previous stories she has written have had similar themes. This could mean this story could be the same.
The story is based around a young married couple that buy lots of souvenirs on holiday in Rhodesia. A train arrives at a small station. The young woman asks a beggar to show her a lion that he carved himself. She takes a look at it, but doesn't buy it, as it is too expensive. As the train slowly leaves, the beggar drops his price from three-and-six to one-and-six.
The young man brought it and gave it to his wife. She wasn't happy and wanted him to take it back because the beggar deserved more for it, if you look and read more into the story, this could come across to the young woman that the young man doesn't think she deserves something so expensive.
The structure of this story is simple as it is all in chronological order, but sometimes the story gives hints of things that happened in the past. This story has a sense of rhythm to it, which could be traced ...
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The young man brought it and gave it to his wife. She wasn't happy and wanted him to take it back because the beggar deserved more for it, if you look and read more into the story, this could come across to the young woman that the young man doesn't think she deserves something so expensive.
The structure of this story is simple as it is all in chronological order, but sometimes the story gives hints of things that happened in the past. This story has a sense of rhythm to it, which could be traced back to the train.
"One-and-six, one-and-six, one-and-six,"
This could be said in a way which sounds like a train. There is no resolution as the story ending is very similar to the beginning of the story. Its like a spiral, there is some sense of progression, but we still don't know there the story goes. Personification is used to bring the train to life.
"There was a grunt. The train jerked"
This makes the reader feel as if the train is a person, or that maybe it could be a symbol for a person, or the writer might have used personification to give the train power. There are also links from the train to symbolise a snake.
"The segmented body of the train heaved and bumped against itself"
If you replace the word "train" with "snake" you can see that both sentences make sense and are a very good description for both. The author repeats the snake image by saying,
"The train had cast the station like a skin"
This gives me an image of a snake shedding its skin, but could also be a hidden message that as the white people go home on the train, their time in Africa and African people are left behind and they are erased from their memory because the white people don't need the Africans anymore.
The main characters are the young woman, the young man and the beggar. The story doesn't tell us anything about these characters, not even their names. Maybe because the write wanted the train to be the main character, and by using personification, as she did, it could be possible that this is what she tried to achieve. From the text, you can see that the young man is very upper class, and looks down on the less fortunate, like the beggar. But the young woman is very down-to-earth and believes that although the beggar is poor, he deserves all the same respect.
It doesn't tell us why the young couple were in Africa, but hints were given to think that they had just got married and then went on a honeymoon.
"She was feeling like this again. She had thought it was something to do with her singleness"
The train from Rhodesia is set in South Africa, the same place Nadine Gordimer, the author, was born. The story is based around the train and it explains the thoughts of people going on the train. People who are returning to their homes from Rhodesia are unhappy that they have to leave this false life they have been living.
"She sat down again in the corner and, her face slumped in her hands, stared out of the window"
This gives the reader a sense of depression of the young woman, she is upset that she has to go back to reality, maybe with a husband she only married because she thought her life would change. But she was wrong.
" She was feeling like this again. She had thought it was something to do with singleness, with being alone and belonging too much to oneself"
If she was to marry, she had the idea that it would give her a sense of purpose. But when the young man disappointed her by refusing to buy the young woman a carved lion at the price of three-and-six, so instead he waited for the poor old man to drop the price of the marvellous piece of work to one-and-six. She had the horrible feeling of worthlessness that she had once felt before.
Nadine Gordimer of this story has repeated words for more enthusiasm and also to create a rhythm as a symbol for the train. She has also used personification to make the train appear to be a person.
"Creaking, jerking, jostling, gasping, the train filled the station"
This is personification because she is trying to make the train come to life by saying that it gasps and jerks. The writer hides meanings into her story that can relate back to African traditions and the differences and disputes between the white people and Africans. If you read between the lines you realise that the author has made the train look like a character. By using personification and also using words that can mean the train is looking for something. Such as,
"Dwindling"
She also makes out that nobody is answering the trains calls, and that the train needs help, or maybe it's the people on the train that need help, or are not being answered, as they want to keep the false and happy life they have been living in Africa, instead of facing their problems and miserable lives back at home.
"I'm coming . . . I'm coming . . ."
I chose to write about "The Train From Rhodesia" because I like the way the author included hidden meanings and messages about Africans and the white people. Her beliefs and experience from growing up in South Africa has reflected in her writing. I like her use of personification towards the train and I also like the way she makes the characters feelings clear even though she has not explained it in great detail. She gives you the option of having your own story ending by not telling you the whole story, so you make parts of it up yourself.
Julie White