Literary Analysis: Trains & Railways in The Railway Children by E. Nesbit

Recently I read The Railway Children by E. Nesbit and adored it. So, I made a podcast episode here to relay some of my thoughts, and you'll find the transcript for it here, but I also wanted to add a few points here on my blog that I didn't get the chance to share on my podcast episode.

This analysis will probably have some spoilers, so if you've not read this classic and don't want to know what happens before you delve into it, don't read ahead! You can still listen to my book review on my podcast here, which is spoiler-free. Finally, it's been a while since I've actively analyzed literature, so if I'm a bit rusty here and there, it hopefully won't last long.

A photo of my copy of the book.

Trains & Railroads

The story takes place around one central setting: the railway that the Bobbie, Peter, Phyllis, and their mother move near to. The symbolism of the train/station interests me because I also feature a similar element in my forthcoming suspense novella, Apartment - a subway station, to be exact. So, while trying to read more deeply into The Railway Children, it was only natural that the railway and the station grabbed my attention.

Trains are interesting symbols. What do trains do? They take you different places as a passenger, and are temporary spaces we occupy - some might say liminal. If it's a regular commute, watching others on the train can become a habitual experience. As an on-looker, you see them pass you by and wonder where they're going and who's on them. And you can also walk through them, while stationary or in motion. In a more figurative sense, a train provides a journey with a definite end, a specific destination. Many have linked this to the idea of fate or destiny, and see trains as symbolizing these two concepts. Linked to this is the idea of choice - how trains represent a very definite choice (to stay or to go; to get off or stay on) with very distinct consequences. 

Sometimes, a train ride is a journey towards the unknown - and for the children in this book, that is very much so. A train brings them to this new place they must call home, next to this train station that they soon find themselves spending quite a bit of time in and around. A train carries them to this unfamiliar destination, and a station - a temporary space where very few people stay for any substantial amount of time, unless they work there, perhaps - becomes the main attraction for these three siblings.

After the adventure of Peter's Coal-mine, it seemed well to the children to keep away from the station—but they did not, they could not, keep away from the railway. They had lived all their lives in a street where cabs and omnibuses rumbled by at all hours, and the carts of butchers and bakers and candlestick makers (I never saw a candlestick-maker's cart; did you?) might occur at any moment. Here in the deep silence of the sleeping country the only things that went by were the trains. They seemed to be all that was left to link the children to the old life that had once been theirs.

With the father away and under investigation, the family finds themselves stuck in this new place, and must adapt and make do with a new life that is quite different from their previous one. Being stuck in a place and watching the train go by, every day, without fail - it seems almost as though the train would being to represent a sense of freedom. And, more than that, the railway itself represents a path to their father, if only they could follow it, and a physical link to him when they have not seen him in so long and do not know where he is and miss him awfully. It also presents a link to the city, as you might be able to tell from the passage above. The train is the last link the children have to the urban lifestyle they've known all their lives, and they are therefore constantly finding their way back to it because it comforts them to be around it.

However, for the children, the train also represents something else, and this has to do with who is on the train. They watch the passengers on their usual commutes, and get to know them by face. They start to interact with these people that seem to have so much more freedom than they - freedom enough to leave this place the children find themselves stuck in, away from all that they know to be familiar. The kids are physically stuck in this new place, so by watching the train, there is the sensation that the world goes on, even as their world has been put on hold, no matter how temporarily. It is both comforting to watch others go about their lives and know that the world goes on and disconcerting to find that they are unable to return to the home they had grown in and cherished - to the ease and happiness of a situation that was taken away from them with the disappearance of their father.

The train also represents hope, such as the hope that the train, wherever it goes, leads to wherever their father is and will send a part of them - their love - with them to him, and the hope that the old gentleman will help their father or help them when their mother is ill. And always, always for the children, there is the hope that their father will appear.

"The Green Dragon's going where Father is," said Phyllis; "if it were a really real dragon, we could stop it and ask it to take our love to Father."

"Dragons don't carry people's love," said Peter; "they'd be above it."

"Yes, they do, if you tame them thoroughly first. They fetch and carry like pet spaniels," said Phyllis, "and feed out of your hand. I wonder why Father never writes to us."

"Mother says he's been too busy," said Bobbie; "but he'll write soon, she says."

"I say," Phyllis suggested, "let's all wave to the Green Dragon as it goes by. If it's a magic dragon, it'll understand and take our loves to Father. And if it isn't, three waves aren't much. We shall never miss them."

Finally, there is the magical aspect to trains - especially for children, who might not quite understand how something like a train functions. To them, it may seem quite magical - and as you can read in the excerpt above, they refer to it as the Green Dragon. This childlike imagination, intertwined so closely in the story with hope and love, is part of what fuels my love for this book. It creates an atmosphere charged with yearning, but also with an overwhelming positive force that allows the reader to hope, too, and believe that everything will turn out alright in the end.

I'm sure there are many more ways we can dig deeper into the symbolism of the train and the railway in The Railway Children, but these were just some thoughts that I wanted to share, especially since there is a slight overlap - along with many differences - with the way I use the symbol of the subway station and the subway train in my eerie suspense novella, Apartment.

(By the way - Apartment is coming out January 5, 2021! You can learn more about it by checking out all the Apartment posts here.)

I hope you found that this somewhat made sense! I've always enjoyed literary analysis, and I was thinking how unfortunate it was that I hadn't had the chance to do much of it after high school. I'm hoping to be able to do many more pieces like this in the future that delve into some aspect of analysis that I find interested in books that I read.