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
On the outskirts of Port Elizabeth is the rundown graveyard of the squatter camp Shukuma. Most of the graves lack names and are marked instead by pieces of trash. Roelf Visagie, a white Afrikaans man, is exploring the graves “helplessly” while Simon watches, leaning on a spade. Roelf explains to Simon that Mr. Mdoda, the undertaker, told Roelf that Simon buried the woman he is looking for. Roelf laments the sorry state of the graveyard and angrily wonders why the graves are covered in rubbish. Simon explains that he has placed the trash because “there is no flowers in Shukuma,” and Roelf assumes that these grave markers are a sign of respect.
Roelf is introduced as being out of his element and “helpless.” He aims to find a dead woman, but he has no concrete plan to achieve that goal and wanders impotently until Simon’s presence disrupts his helpless confusion. Roelf’s anger at the state of the graveyard also shows his ignorance of the institutional effects of poverty. He is frustrated that the residents of Shukuma do not respect their dead as he thinks appropriate, but he fails to consider what might prevent them from doing so. Simon’s explanation that “there is no flowers in Shukuma” calls attention to the fact that Shukuma lacks the most basic advantages of wealthier, predominantly white areas.
Themes
Roelf protests that Simon should mark the graves with a wooden cross, but Simon points out that people would steal the wood for fires. This only pushes Roelf to further despair, and he claims that Hell is “where she deserves to be.” He recounts searching the local “pondoks” (huts) for someone missing a young woman and her baby, adding that the woman wore her hair in a red doek (headscarf). The people he asks dismiss him, sometimes rudely, and Roelf is disgusted at their living conditions. Finally, he meets Mr. Mdoda at the morgue, and the undertaker sends Roelf to Shukuma.
The fact that wooden crosses would be stolen highlights how poverty forces people to prioritize practicality over gestures of respect or sentimentality, like placing crosses at the graves. Roelf does not yet grasp the impact that poverty and racial oppression can have on a life. Though he has witnessed the poor quality of life among the pondoks, Roelf so far refuses to empathize with the Black residents. His despair at his own situation, combined with his ignorance about race and poverty, spark his anger at the dead woman. He knows little about her, but he still condemns her to Hell.
Themes
Roelf points to a grave and asks Simon who is buried there. Simon, shocked, responds that he doesn’t look inside the body bags. He must dig the graves deep, so they are not disturbed by wild dogs or wind. He asks why Roelf is looking for the woman in the red doek, assuming that she must have been his servant. Roelf is reluctant to answer, but he reveals that he wants to curse her, violently, “in both official languages because [he is] fully bilingual.” He explains that she ruined his life, and he works himself into such a frenzy that he breaks into sobs.
Once again, Roelf and Simon differ in their expectations of burials. Simon continues to prioritize pragmatism, while Roelf continues to search for any way the burial process might allow the dead to retain some piece of their identities. Simon’s assumption that the woman in the red doek was Roelf’s servant also emphasizes the racial divide in post-apartheid South African society, as Simon does not expect that Roelf would have any connection to a Black woman besides being her employer. Roelf’s claim of being “fully bilingual” also calls attention to the linguistic divides in South Africa. Roelf speaks “both official languages”––that is, English and Afrikaans, the two dominant colonial languages in a country full of native tribal ones.
Themes
Simon warns Roelf that the local young delinquents will attack a white man if they find him in Shukuma after dark. He refers to the gangs as “amagintsa,” local Xhosa slang for robbers, but has to clarify when Roelf doesn’t understand that word. Even after Simon explains his meaning, Roelf refuses to leave. He insists that he has no home to return to ever since the dead woman, whom he has taken to calling Red Doek, made him “crash” off his previously set “rails.” He claims that he might as well be one of “the ones without names” who Simon buried.
Simon, like Roelf, is bilingual, as he switches between English and Xhosa frequently, but bilingualism with a native language does not confer the same status as Roelf’s ability to speak both colonial languages. Even when Simon explains the meaning of Xhosa words, Roelf refuses to listen to him. He accuses Red Doek of making him “crash” off the “rails,” and this language of a train crash foreshadows the explanation of the accident that haunts Roelf. His despair is so great that it drives him to relate to the nameless bodies in the graves, which suggests that Roelf might in fact be able to empathize, to some extent, with the Black residents of Shukuma.
Themes
Get the entire The Train Driver LitChart as a printable PDF.
Simon hesitantly requests again that Roelf leave, because the amagintsa will come after Simon for letting a white man invade their people’s resting place. More firmly, he orders Roelf to come with him. He prods Roelf with his spade and tells him to “wake up.” Roelf follows Simon.
The threat of the amagintsa speaks to the fact that South African racial tensions are not one-sided: some Black residents of Shukuma have responded to white racism by fiercely protecting their own territory. Simon’s desire to protect both himself and Roelf from this threat emboldens him to give Roelf a command. Simon consistently refers to the dead as “sleeping,” so his order for Roelf to “wake up” serves at once to draw Roelf’s attention away from death, and to warn Roelf of the potential for his own death at the hands of the amagintsa.
Themes
