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
While Simon is sleeping, Roelf leaves the shack to walk among the graves. He speaks to Red Doek, imagining that her ghost is in front of him. He reflects on how strange it is that to him, Red Doek will always be just a Black woman with her baby on the tracks, and to her, Roelf will always be a white man staring at her. He refuses to believe in that simplicity, and he insists that he and Red Doek share their suffering in common.
As he speaks to Red Doek, Roelf addresses one aspect of her death that haunts him: the distillation of both his and her identities into who they were at the moment of her death. He has hunted for her name in the hopes of learning who she was beyond simply being a Black woman on the train tracks, but the oppression of poverty and racism have rendered her unknowable to him. Roelf has overcome his initial outrage at her anonymity; he believes that he can connect with Red Doek without either of them truly knowing each other, since they both have suffered.
Themes
Roelf tells Red Doek that looking for her in the pondoks has given him an idea how Black people live. He realizes that although white people think they “know everything” about Black people, they actually know very little. He guesses that Red Doek stepped onto the tracks because she lost hope that life would ever be good to her and her baby. Whenever Simon blows out the candle in his shack, Roelf thinks of the darkness around him as the same as the darkness within Red Doek.
Roelf admits to his racial prejudice, and he admits further that his ignorance reflects a systemic problem. Since white South Africans believe they “know everything” about their Black neighbors, they never seek to learn more. Seeking knowledge ended up being Roelf’s path to empathy. That empathy has allowed him to grasp how utterly Red Doek’s life deprived her of hope, both for herself and for her child.
Themes
Roelf believes that he must “do something,” because Red Doek no longer has a chance to do anything. He fears that he might forget her. He is still fixated on the fact that no one claimed Red Doek’s body, even though she, like all human beings, was made in God’s image. To make up for this, and to prevent himself from forgetting her, Roelf claims Red Doek. He asserts that he “wants her to be his,” and if he ever forgets what happened to him and Red Doek, God must damn him to Hell.
Roelf’s simple profession that he must “do something” highlights the importance of agency. Red Doek lived a life seemingly without much agency, or ability to act on her own behalf, and now that she is dead, she will never have the opportunity to remedy that. Roelf, however, refuses to remain helpless. He takes action to amend the uncaring response to Red Doek’s death by claiming her as his own. Roelf’s belief that all human beings are equally made in God’s image also echoes his earlier claim that worms don’t care whether the bodies they eat are Black or white––only in this case, the equalizer is not death, but creation. Roelf has come to believe that all people are inherently equal, and this belief appears to have transformed him. While once he wished Red Doek would go to Hell, now he willingly faces damnation himself in the interest of keeping her memory alive.
Themes
