Orphan Train

Orphan Train

by

Christina Baker Kline

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Orphan Train makes teaching easy.

Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” Character Analysis

Vivian/Niamh is the novel’s second protagonist. Christened as “Niamh Power”, she was born in Kinvara, County Galway in Ireland in 1920. As a young child, she immigrated to New York with her parents and siblings. Her father and brothers died in a house fire in 1929, while her mother was placed in a mental hospital. Niamh was then sent off to the Midwest on the orphan train. In Minnesota, she moved between two abusive adoptive families (who renamed her “Dorothy”) before finding her way to the Nielsens, the affluent couple who renamed her “Vivian” and raised her. Vivian was married twice, first to Luke Maynard (“Dutchy”) and then to Jim Daly. She is the biological mother of Sarah Darnell, who she gave up for adoption. As a 91-year-old widow living a lonely life, Vivian finds peace by recounting the story of her life to Molly Ayer and cleaning out her attic together. Vivian/Niamh has red curly hair and freckles.

Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” Quotes in Orphan Train

The Orphan Train quotes below are all either spoken by Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” or refer to Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”. 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:
Belonging and Connection Theme Icon
).
Chapter 4 Quotes

But Mr. Schatzman frowns and shakes his head, and it’s then that I realize just how alone I am. There is no adult on this side of the Atlantic who has reason to take any interest in me, no one to guide me onto a boat or pay for my passage. I am a burden to society, and nobody’s responsibility.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Mr. and Mrs. Schatzman
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

No one feels sorry for me because I’ve lost my family. Each of us has a sad tale; we wouldn’t be here otherwise. The general feeling is that it’s best not to talk about the past, that the quickest relief will come in forgetting.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker)
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

Our sponsors have told us little; we know only that we are going to a land where apples grow in abundance on low-hanging branches and cows and pigs and sheep roam freely in the fresh country air. A land where good people – families – are eager to take us in […] But I am skeptical. I know all too well how it is when the beautiful visions you’ve been fed don’t match up with reality.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker)
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

How strange, I think – that I am in a place my parents have never been and will never see. How strange that I am here and they are gone. I touch the claddagh cross around my neck.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Patrick Power/ “Da”, Mary Power/ “Mam”
Related Symbols: The Claddagh Cross / Vivian’s Necklace
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

“For goodness’ sake, Raymond, it doesn’t matter what she thinks,” Mrs. Byrne snaps as she opens her car door. “Dorothy is our choice, and Dorothy she will be.”

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Raymond Byrne, Lois Byrne
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

To her surprise, Molly feels a lump in her throat. She swallows, pushing it down. How ridiculous – an old lady gives her a moldy book she has no use for, and she chokes up. She must be getting her period.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Related Symbols: The Attic / Boxes in the Attic
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

I keep forgetting to answer to Dorothy. But in a way I am glad to have a new identity. It makes it easier to let go of so much else. I’m not the same Niamh who left her Gram and aunties and uncles in Kinvara and came across the ocean on the Agnes Pauline, who lived with her family on Elizabeth Street. No, I am Dorothy now.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Gram, Raymond Byrne, Lois Byrne
Page Number: 98
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

I feel myself retreating to someplace deep inside. It is a pitiful kind of childhood, to know that no one loves you or is taking care of you, to always be on the outside looking in. I feel a decade older than my years. I know too much; I have seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Raymond Byrne, Lois Byrne, Mr. Sorenson
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

Maybe it’ll be a stretch to find drama in Vivian’s portage – a happy, stable life does not an interesting story make, right? But even the rich have their problems, or so Molly’s heard. It will be her task to extract them.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Related Symbols: Portaging
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“Well,” Molly says, “I think the boat represents what you take with you – the essential things – from place to place. And the water – well, I think it’s the place you’re always trying to get to.”

Related Characters: Molly Ayer (speaker), Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Related Symbols: Portaging
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

“I will help you find a home,” she says gently. “A place that is safe and clean, where you’ll be treated like a ten-year-old-girl. I promise you that.”

Related Characters: Miss Larsen (speaker), Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

Why shouldn’t Vivian’s attic be filled with things that are meaningful to her? The stark truth is that she will die sooner than later […] So yes – Molly has begun to view her work at Vivian’s in a different light. Maybe it doesn’t matter how much gets done. Maybe the value is in the process – in touching each item, in naming and identifying, in acknowledging the significance of a cardigan, a pair of children’s boots.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”, Jack
Related Symbols: The Attic / Boxes in the Attic
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes, Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They are with us in the grocery store as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Related Symbols: The Attic / Boxes in the Attic
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 29 Quotes

They don’t seem eager to learn about me, but then again, few people are. I get the sense that my abandonment, and the circumstances that brought me to them, matter little to them, compared to the need I might fill in their lives.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Viola Nielsen, Mr. Nielsen
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

And though I rarely take the claddagh off, as I get older I can’t escape the realization that the only remaining piece of my blood family comes from a woman who pushed her only son and his family out to sea in a boat, knowing full well she’d probably never see them again.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Gram
Related Symbols: The Claddagh Cross / Vivian’s Necklace
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

“Ah, well,” Vivian says. “I suppose we all come under false pretenses one way or another, don’t we?”

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Molly Ayer
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

We both start laughing – at the absurdity of our shared experiences, the relief of recognition. We cling to each other like survivors of a shipwreck, astonished that neither of us drowned.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Dutchy / Hans / Luke Maynard
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

Lying in that hospital bed I feel all of it: the terrible weight of sorrow, the crumbling of my dreams. I sob uncontrollably for all that I’ve lost – the love of my life, my family, a future I’d dared to envision. And in that moment I make a decision. I can’t go through this again. I can’t give myself to someone so completely only to lose them. I don’t want, ever again, to experience the loss of someone I love beyond reason.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Dutchy / Hans / Luke Maynard, Sarah Dunnell/ “May”
Page Number: 246-247
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

She can sleep with the door open, wander around freely, come and go without someone watching her every move. She hadn’t realized how much of a toll the years of judgment and criticism, implied and expressed, had taken on her. It’s as if she’s been walking on a wire, trying to keep her balance, and now, for the first time, she is on solid ground.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Page Number: 256
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

Sitting in the rocker in the kitchen, looking out at the water, Molly feels oddly at peace. For the first time since she can remember, her life is beginning to make sense. What up until this moment has felt like a random, disconnected series of unhappy events she now views as necessary steps in a journey toward… enlightenment is perhaps too strong a word, but there are others, less lofty, like self-acceptance and perspective.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Page Number: 272
Explanation and Analysis:

Molly touches Vivian’s shoulder, frail and bony under her thin silk cardigan. She half turns, half smiles, her eyes brimming with tears. Her hand flutters to her clavicle, to the silver chain around her neck, the claddagh charm – those tiny hands clasping a crowned heart: love, loyalty, friendship – a never-ending path that leads away from home and circles back.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”, Sarah Dunnell/ “May”
Related Symbols: The Claddagh Cross / Vivian’s Necklace
Page Number: 273
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Orphan Train LitChart as a printable PDF.
Orphan Train PDF

Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” Quotes in Orphan Train

The Orphan Train quotes below are all either spoken by Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” or refer to Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”. 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:
Belonging and Connection Theme Icon
).
Chapter 4 Quotes

But Mr. Schatzman frowns and shakes his head, and it’s then that I realize just how alone I am. There is no adult on this side of the Atlantic who has reason to take any interest in me, no one to guide me onto a boat or pay for my passage. I am a burden to society, and nobody’s responsibility.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Mr. and Mrs. Schatzman
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

No one feels sorry for me because I’ve lost my family. Each of us has a sad tale; we wouldn’t be here otherwise. The general feeling is that it’s best not to talk about the past, that the quickest relief will come in forgetting.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker)
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:

Our sponsors have told us little; we know only that we are going to a land where apples grow in abundance on low-hanging branches and cows and pigs and sheep roam freely in the fresh country air. A land where good people – families – are eager to take us in […] But I am skeptical. I know all too well how it is when the beautiful visions you’ve been fed don’t match up with reality.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker)
Page Number: 31
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

How strange, I think – that I am in a place my parents have never been and will never see. How strange that I am here and they are gone. I touch the claddagh cross around my neck.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Patrick Power/ “Da”, Mary Power/ “Mam”
Related Symbols: The Claddagh Cross / Vivian’s Necklace
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

“For goodness’ sake, Raymond, it doesn’t matter what she thinks,” Mrs. Byrne snaps as she opens her car door. “Dorothy is our choice, and Dorothy she will be.”

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Raymond Byrne, Lois Byrne
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

To her surprise, Molly feels a lump in her throat. She swallows, pushing it down. How ridiculous – an old lady gives her a moldy book she has no use for, and she chokes up. She must be getting her period.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Related Symbols: The Attic / Boxes in the Attic
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

I keep forgetting to answer to Dorothy. But in a way I am glad to have a new identity. It makes it easier to let go of so much else. I’m not the same Niamh who left her Gram and aunties and uncles in Kinvara and came across the ocean on the Agnes Pauline, who lived with her family on Elizabeth Street. No, I am Dorothy now.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Gram, Raymond Byrne, Lois Byrne
Page Number: 98
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

I feel myself retreating to someplace deep inside. It is a pitiful kind of childhood, to know that no one loves you or is taking care of you, to always be on the outside looking in. I feel a decade older than my years. I know too much; I have seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Raymond Byrne, Lois Byrne, Mr. Sorenson
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

Maybe it’ll be a stretch to find drama in Vivian’s portage – a happy, stable life does not an interesting story make, right? But even the rich have their problems, or so Molly’s heard. It will be her task to extract them.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Related Symbols: Portaging
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“Well,” Molly says, “I think the boat represents what you take with you – the essential things – from place to place. And the water – well, I think it’s the place you’re always trying to get to.”

Related Characters: Molly Ayer (speaker), Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Related Symbols: Portaging
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

“I will help you find a home,” she says gently. “A place that is safe and clean, where you’ll be treated like a ten-year-old-girl. I promise you that.”

Related Characters: Miss Larsen (speaker), Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

Why shouldn’t Vivian’s attic be filled with things that are meaningful to her? The stark truth is that she will die sooner than later […] So yes – Molly has begun to view her work at Vivian’s in a different light. Maybe it doesn’t matter how much gets done. Maybe the value is in the process – in touching each item, in naming and identifying, in acknowledging the significance of a cardigan, a pair of children’s boots.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”, Jack
Related Symbols: The Attic / Boxes in the Attic
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes, Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They are with us in the grocery store as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Related Symbols: The Attic / Boxes in the Attic
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 29 Quotes

They don’t seem eager to learn about me, but then again, few people are. I get the sense that my abandonment, and the circumstances that brought me to them, matter little to them, compared to the need I might fill in their lives.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Viola Nielsen, Mr. Nielsen
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

And though I rarely take the claddagh off, as I get older I can’t escape the realization that the only remaining piece of my blood family comes from a woman who pushed her only son and his family out to sea in a boat, knowing full well she’d probably never see them again.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Gram
Related Symbols: The Claddagh Cross / Vivian’s Necklace
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

“Ah, well,” Vivian says. “I suppose we all come under false pretenses one way or another, don’t we?”

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Molly Ayer
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

We both start laughing – at the absurdity of our shared experiences, the relief of recognition. We cling to each other like survivors of a shipwreck, astonished that neither of us drowned.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Dutchy / Hans / Luke Maynard
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

Lying in that hospital bed I feel all of it: the terrible weight of sorrow, the crumbling of my dreams. I sob uncontrollably for all that I’ve lost – the love of my life, my family, a future I’d dared to envision. And in that moment I make a decision. I can’t go through this again. I can’t give myself to someone so completely only to lose them. I don’t want, ever again, to experience the loss of someone I love beyond reason.

Related Characters: Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy” (speaker), Dutchy / Hans / Luke Maynard, Sarah Dunnell/ “May”
Page Number: 246-247
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

She can sleep with the door open, wander around freely, come and go without someone watching her every move. She hadn’t realized how much of a toll the years of judgment and criticism, implied and expressed, had taken on her. It’s as if she’s been walking on a wire, trying to keep her balance, and now, for the first time, she is on solid ground.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Page Number: 256
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

Sitting in the rocker in the kitchen, looking out at the water, Molly feels oddly at peace. For the first time since she can remember, her life is beginning to make sense. What up until this moment has felt like a random, disconnected series of unhappy events she now views as necessary steps in a journey toward… enlightenment is perhaps too strong a word, but there are others, less lofty, like self-acceptance and perspective.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”
Page Number: 272
Explanation and Analysis:

Molly touches Vivian’s shoulder, frail and bony under her thin silk cardigan. She half turns, half smiles, her eyes brimming with tears. Her hand flutters to her clavicle, to the silver chain around her neck, the claddagh charm – those tiny hands clasping a crowned heart: love, loyalty, friendship – a never-ending path that leads away from home and circles back.

Related Characters: Molly Ayer, Vivian Daly / Niamh Power / “Dorothy”, Sarah Dunnell/ “May”
Related Symbols: The Claddagh Cross / Vivian’s Necklace
Page Number: 273
Explanation and Analysis: