Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Train Driver, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Empathy
Language
Helplessness vs. Agency
Names
Hope vs. Despair
Summary
Analysis
Simon once again addresses the audience, and he tells them how the story ends. The amagintsa come in the night, and Simon in his shack hears shouting and swearing. In the morning, Mr. Mdoda arrives with a new corpse, and he and Simon find the ground covered in blood. Simon digs and finds Roelf stripped naked, buried in the grave he had been digging last night.
Simon has warned Roelf about the amagintsa throughout the play, but Roelf has always ignored him. By leaving the shack at night, Roelf reveals a willingness to put himself in physical danger in order to achieve emotional resolution. Roelf succumbs to physical violence after spending much of the play wanting to inflict verbal violence on Red Doek, which highlights the limits of verbal violence when compared to its physical counterpart––and yet, the amagintsa’s murder of Roelf is accompanied by swearing, suggesting that verbal violence can lead to or enable physical violence. The fact that the amagintsa bury Roelf in the grave he dug for Red Doek cements the connection between Roelf and Red Doek, as Roelf is metaphorically united with Red Doek in the grave that was symbolically intended for her.
Themes
The police believe Simon killed Roelf, but when Simon protests his innocence, they ask instead why Simon “let this whiteman die here” among their people. Simon takes Mr. Mdoda’s advice and pretends not to know Roelf. The police confiscate Simon’s spade because it has blood on it, and Mr. Mdoda fires him. Simon is left without a job or a spade, and he holds his hands out to the audience in a “helpless gesture.”
When Simon pretends not to know Roelf, Roelf symbolically loses some of his identity. He goes from being a train driver and a friend to a nameless white man who encroached on Black territory. On the other hand, Roelf is a well-off white man with a family, so he will likely not be buried in an unmarked grave like Red Doek was. This complex relationship between namelessness and privilege mirrors the intricacies of oppression in post-apartheid South Africa. Death can easily rob people of their identities, but those with privilege can regain a fraction of that identity when they are buried. Simon, meanwhile, is left “helpless.” He has spent the play in the role of caretaker, guiding Roelf when Roelf’s own helplessness overwhelmed him. Simon is rewarded by being stripped of agency and left at the mercy of his employer and the police—and this fate is the final image the audience is left with, suggesting that the audience is meant to consider where they fit into the complex web of agency, complicity, and helplessness
Themes
