Boy On A Train
One of Ellison’s short stories that we read but didn’t discuss in class was “Boy on a Train”. I personally enjoyed the way this this story, like many of his stories in Flying Home, is told through the perspective of a child. In the story we follow a young boy, his mother and his younger brother on a train. The boy sees that his mother is upset, and gets so angry that he vows to kill whatever it is that is upsetting her when he gets older. He doesn’t yet understand what “it” is that is hurting his mother, but we get the feeling that the young boy is starting to understand where he stands in a racially discriminate society. He witnesses the way his family is treated by the white people on the train, like his mother being groped by the butcher. His innocence is suddenly confronted when he witnesses this.
His mother tells him about his father, and states that he must remember and understand the reason why they are in search of a better life in Oklahoma City. What ‘it” might stand for is the injustice with which his family and other African American people are faced. It is a great story about the innocence of children and what their perspective of the world may be.
I definitely agree with your reading of Boy on a Train, and I think that Ellison’s choice to tell this and other stories from the point of view of a child is especially brilliant because it allows for readers to sympathize and understand the perspective of what it means to be a black man in America. While white readers may have blown off the perspective of a regular black man, everyone can relate to the feelings of an ending innocence and the desire to protect one’s family.
I agree with you that Ellison uses children because of the innocence and limited perspective. The boy does not fully understand what is going on, however he does understand bits and pieces, like his mother being groped by the butcher. However, as a reader we can fill in a lot of the gaps that the child does not understand. Unlike the previous stories this child seems a lot younger and less vocal than Riley and Buster. I also think that Ellison uses children to represent a new generation of black Americans with new perspectives and different experiences than the previous generations, represented by Aunt Kate in That I Had the Wings and the mother in the Boy on a Train.
I also think the title of this piece makes a statement about the story as well as Ellison’s intentions with it. We aren’t even told the boy’s name and yet he has his own distinct identity. Though he is simply a boy on a train, he bears the weight of the responsibilities of his family. Unlike other children who daydream of baseball and ice cream, this little boy is forced to grow up far earlier than he ever should. He is forced to think about things no child should ever be pressed with. I think Ellison is trying to convey the notion that even though he is just a boy like any other boy sitting on a train, he, like many other black Americans, is constantly fighting his own inner battle.