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CTGttW Question 9: Train vs people
A question I got from elsewhere:
Consider the quote “The train must run. That is the only truth that matters. Not who is destroyed along the way.” At what points in the novel does this idea feel particularly true? What does this quote say about the morals of the book and the characters aboard the train?
Comments
I don’t think it says much about the characters in the book, except for who might have uttered it, presumable in one of the contexts above. As for the morals of the book… can books have morals? I find that question confusing.
@NeilNjae Like @Apocryphal I'm not sure what these questions mean, or maybe what they are about. The idea expressed in the quote is one of the principal drivers of the narrative action: Everyone who is on the train in some way must make their own peace with this idea, which non can deny, even if they did not choose to be on the train from the first (Weiwei - action acting vs wu wei - non-action acting?).
As for the moral quality, surely that resides in the reader's response to the text, which like all text cannot be other than ambiguous, even if that is bounded by its own limits. I think I'll say more about this when I've read your question about the ending, which I thought was particularly weak, and firmly placed the book in YA fiction rather than adult literature. Haters gonna hate. Anyway, if I dont discuss it there I'll try to rememeber to come back here and expand my comment.
@Apocryphal Sure, but which of the options does it mean?
@Apocryphal Makes sense. I guess I see it as an expression of a social imperative, wherein the only consequence of an action that matters is that the action maintains and regenerates the company that does the action.
I guess the train is the Juggernaut here - relentless progress that annihilates. Except that at the end of the book the Wasteland has (as it were) recruited the train which is now juggernauting for evolutionary change rather than planned conquest. And with that change then "who is destroyed" also changes.
As to books having morals, I took this to mean the morality that the book explicitly or implicitly presents (rather than whether a book can or cannot have morals). So here there are strong themes of loyalty and staying together in the face of external power figures like the crows or the company itself. Those are presented as Good Things.
The individual morality of the characters within the book aligns to different degrees with that - the Crows have a simple mandate to enact Company law. The religious guy pursues his own agenda which he believes to be divinely inspired. Marya will commit all kinds of social infractions in order to find out what happened to her father and his ideas. But in the end (IMHO) people's importance and standing within the narrative rests on their willingness or otherwise to uphold the train community despite external challenges.
That's a question I was considering asking: is the idea of "found family" and community a significant element of the narrative? People in the book are often doing things for others, not themselves. The Crows and Dr Grey are exceptions, and they don't survive the journey. And even at the end, most people stay aboard the train.
> That's a question I was considering asking: is the idea of "found family" and community a significant element of the narrative? People in the book are often doing things for others, not themselves. The Crows and Dr Grey are exceptions, and they don't survive the journey. And even at the end, most people stay aboard the train.
Interesting observation, and yes that rings true.
Your quote sounds like something the author said to herself while writing.