The Symbolic Value of Trains

 by Isaac Mead

Trains form an integral part to many PGS pupils’ experiences; the cramped seats, countless delays and grumpy passengers are routine and whilst not sounding particularly pleasant, I’ve always been intrigued by the vaguely symbolic air all these journeys possess. So, what do they represent? 

Well, traditionally trains tend to connote journeys as people move from one place to another, and there is also something to be said about the impermanence of travelling on them - the exact time of your journey is laid out ahead of you (depending on the probable delays…), yet time pauses whilst you sit and occupy yourself and the world around you zooms by. People join and others hop off, creating a temporary moment of togetherness as everyone advances to the next stop and possibly my favourite element is the fleeting scenes of blurred landscapes that fly past the window. These abstractions of the surroundings become recognisable obscurities with routine and give certain journeys a sense of familiarity. With all of that metaphorical fluff out the way I thought I’d look at the implementation of trains as symbols in art, literature and film.

I thought I’d start with something I’m currently studying at the moment - some poetry from Phillip Larkin’s collection ‘The Whitsun Weddings’. Trains are a common motif of Larkin and something that he implements in the uncharacteristically positive title poem from ‘The Whitsun Weddings’; it is a first person account of a train journey where an observer (of whom it can be thought of as Larkin himself) witnesses newly-wed couples in fleeting moments as he travels through the post-war British landscape. At the beginning of the poem, the train is used as a symbol of industrialisation that highlights the juxtaposition within Britain between the rural countryside and post-industrialised cities. However, as the poem progresses, the train picks up a new identity that is filled with hope and potential that is exemplified by this final stanza:

‘There we were aimed. And as we raced across

      Bright knots of rail

Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss

Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail

Travelling coincidence; and what it held

Stood ready to be loosed with all the power

That being changed can give. We slowed again,

And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled

A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower

Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.’

A certain togetherness of everyone on the train persists through the repeated use of the collective pronoun ‘we’, emphasising everyone’s collective fate and future and the verb ‘aimed’ suggests a purpose and destination for all the passengers. The final lines that describe the train coming to a halt utilise the imagery of an ‘arrow shower’ to convey a moment of potential being expelled and then being thrown into the unknown, which continues through the idea of the arrows ‘becoming rain’; this description conjures up imagery of fecundity and growth possible from the time many on the train have experienced collectively.

Next, I wanted to see how a different portrayal of what trains can mean is communicated visually. Above is a painting titled ‘At the Train Station’ by Belgian painter Hilde Goosens. Goosens creates a simple composition - people waiting to board a train, but the image is also one of isolation. The facelessness of the people awaiting their journey blends them into one unified identity of people who are somehow simultaneously together and all apart. This is perhaps a comment on the temporary collective identity people form as they travel to their separate destinations. Moreover, the muted colour palette of blues and greens and seemingly loose structure of the station highlights the transience and passing moment of travelling. 

And finally, I come to possibly my favourite portrayal of trains, the two minute train scene from Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘Spirited Away’. Miyazaki has stated himself that he incorporates something called ‘ma’ in his films, ‘ma’ being a Japanese word that refers to the space between two structural parts / a gap. It is a spatiotemporal term that thinks of space and time not as separate entities, but intertwined forces (Movement through space = movement through time). In this case, the train encapsulates what ma stands for as the train becomes an unsettled and continuous ‘place’ that acts as an interspace. The passengers and guard who accompany the protagonists appear faceless, simply temporary and part of a fading memory (this links to the transience conveyed by Goosens’ painting). This narrative gap aboard the train serves to highlight the ambiguity of the in-between - a space where one has departed but not yet arrived.

Bibliography:

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-715-At-the-Trainstation/26898/4962585/view

https://onartandaesthetics.com/2017/01/09/alienation-and-an-immense-silence/

https://blautoothdmand.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/why-the-train-scene-in-spirited-away-is-my-favorite-work-by-miyazaki/