The Train Driver takes place in South Africa, which recognizes 11 official languages. Roelf is a native Afrikaans speaker, and Simon’s first language is Xhosa. The two communicate in English, though each man peppers phrases of his own language into the dialogue. Roelf appears to be more fluent in English than Simon is, and he emphasizes more than once that he is “fully bilingual.” However, he does not know Simon’s language, and he often fails to understand what Simon has said to him. As a bond forms between the two men, they begin to bridge the language barrier. The Train Driver, like most plays, is driven by dialogue. Spoken language becomes the primary method by which the characters relate to each other, themselves, and the world around them. In this way, language is established as a powerful tool for connection (through communication) and violence (through swearing).
The Train Driver takes place in a graveyard of unmarked graves, which immediately underscores the significance of names and the tragedy of namelessness. Names are tied to identity throughout the play, and the unique naming conventions of each character exemplify how names are at once an expression of identity and a reflection of how identity develops. Though she is a central figure in the plot, neither the other characters nor the audience ever learn Red Doek’s name. The head covering she wore, and the fact that she died, are the only things that identify her. On the other hand, Simon has two names: Andile, the name he was born with, and Simon, his “whiteman’s name.” His transition to a new name highlights how names are intrinsic to identity. When Simon left his family in Hluleka, he created a new identity to survive in his new, predominantly white environment, and he marked that new identity with a new name. Renaming also appears when Simon nicknames Roelf “Roelfie” and “Roofie.” These nicknames call attention to the developing friendship between the two men. These name changes and nicknames demonstrate how names are not only identifiers of an individual, but they also represent how that individual relates to the people around them over the course of one’s life.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Names ThemeTracker
Names Quotes in The Train Driver
SIMON: My name is Simon Hanabe, I am the one who puts the nameless ones in the grave. This is how it happened. When I first see the whiteman…he is walking among the amangcwaba where the ones with names is sleeping…. Then he sees me watching him and he comes to me and starts talking but that time I didn't know what he was saying––his words were all mixed up like he was drunk. So he gets very cross with me when I shake my head and tell him I don't know what he is saying.
ROELF: (with vicious deliberation) Ja. Give me her name…or show me her grave…and I will do it. S’trues God. In both official languages because I am fully bilingual…I’ll do it so that her ghost can hear me. I’ll tell her how she has fucked up my life…the selfish black bitch…that I am sitting here with my arse in the dirt because thanks to her I am losing everything…my home, my family, my job…my bloody mind! Ja! Another fucking day like this one and I won’t know who I am anymore or what the fuck I am doing!
ROELF: You don’t understand anything. I’ve crashed! I was on the rails, I was going forward, everything up to schedule…until it all crashed. Thanks to that woman with the red doek I don’t know if I’ve got a home anymore. I don’t know if I’ve got a family anymore, or a job or…ja…a life. You said it: this is the place for the ones without names…and I think I’m one of them now. Roelf Visagie? Who the hell is he? You got your spade so dig another grave, man.
ROELF: All I could think of to say was, “What the fucking hell are you all staring at?” And Lorraine said, “These are your children, Roelf Visagie––go swear at your woman from the bush.”…When I heard those words it was like something just opened up inside me, because I suddenly realized you see that that is what I wanted to do! Ja! I wanted to take a deep breath and then load up my lungs with every dirty thing I had ever heard and then say them into the face of that woman, who still stands there waiting for me in my dreams. I wanted those to be the last words she hears when my train hits her…But the trouble was I didn’t know her name! I mean you know how it is. When you talk to somebody in your mind you think their name, don’t you?
SIMON (…He speaks firmly but gently): You must stop now looking for her.
ROELF: For who?
SIMON: For Red Doek.
ROELF: Red Doek?...
(For a few seconds the name means nothing to him…)
ROELF: That’s right…Red Doek…I’m looking for her…(He is speaking very quietly)…and her baby…You realize, don’t you, Simon, that it was a woman…a mother…with her baby on her back that stepped out on to the rails…there in front of me…and waited…for me…for the end…staring and waiting…
SIMON: I sing to [the ghosts]. I sing like my mother sing to me when I was a little boy and she carry me on her back….
ROELF: You think they hear you?
SIMON: Ewe. They go back to sleep….And all is quiet again.
ROELF: Don’t you feel a bit sorry for them? A little bit sad?
SIMON: No….Why you ask me so much?
ROELF: Why? Because it’s one of your own people for God’s sake. It was certainly somebody’s…I don’t know…husband or brother if it was a man, or somebody’s mother or sister or wife if it was a woman. One thing I know for sure is that if I had to dig a hole and put one of my people in it, I’d have some very strange feelings inside me…even if I didn’t know their name or who they were or what they were.
ROELF: Sometimes I think…that for me you will forever just be Red Doek standing there on the tracks, and that for you I will forever just be a white man staring at you in the few seconds before you die. But…it can’t be as simple as that!...You see, I don’t really know what your story is––who you are, where you come from, what’s your name…But now, thanks to all I’ve seen and heard in the past few weeks…I got some sort of idea, some sort of feeling about your world. You see, Red Doek, most of us white people got no idea about what it’s like because our world is so different! We always think we know––like Lorraine my wife––she thinks she knows everything about you people…and I did as well…but the truth is we don’t.
ROELF: I don't know what it means when I say she is mine, but I know she is because I feel that way inside my heart and so I claimed her. Nobody else wanted her Simon…I do, and that's the end of it.
And I will also tell you that I know when that happened…when she became mine like nothing else in my life has ever really been mine before…it was when we looked into each other's eyes in the few seconds before she and her baby died…underneath me. And you want to know something else, Simon? Maybe it was like that for her also. Ja! Have you thought about that? That I was the last human being she saw. There was no hatred in her eyes, you know, Simon, no anger...just me...she saw me.
