Orphan Train

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1 (Pages 3-46)

Part 2 (Pages 47-68)

Part 3 (Pages 69-126)

Part 4 (Pages 127-168)

Part 5 (Pages 169-200)

Part 6 (Pages 201-236)

Part 7 (Pages 237-273)

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 2 (Pages 47-68)Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2

Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011 (Pages 47-50) Summary

Jack picks Molly up from her first day of work with Vivian. She is wary of Vivian and all her questions.

Molly eats dinner with her foster parents, biding her time and playing the game of going along to get along. For example, her foster parents know she is a vegetarian, yet they deliberately make meals containing meat every night for dinner. Molly eats dinner with a smile, picking around the meat, rather than making a scene that will only get her in trouble or kicked out.

Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011 (Pages 51-56) Summary

Molly begins work for Vivian, organizing and cleaning out her attic. It is hard going, because Vivian wants to touch, talk about, and keep every item. Molly fights her own instinct to throw everything away, and even shares outspoken comments to that effect. They begin with items in a box marked 1929-1930; soon Vivian is caught up in her memories.

The Milwaukee Train, 1929 (Pages 57-60) Summary

Dutchy and Niamh discuss fate and their futures. Dutchy wants them to make a promise to find each other, and it’s clear that he likes Niamh. For example, he compliments her hair. The children’s minders, Mrs. Scatcherd and Mr. Curran, get them cleaned up and remind them of how they should behave so that they are chosen.

Milwaukee Road Depot, Minneapolis, 1929 (Pages 61-68) Summary

The orphans arrive at their first stop in Minnesota. They head for a small stage where they are put on display, and their minders announce to the potential parents that they must agree to feed, clothe, and educate their chosen child until age 18. Carmine is immediately taken by a couple looking for a baby. Dutchy is taken by a couple looking for farm labor, just as he predicted. Niamh is not chosen; she must get back on the train.

Part 2 Analysis (Pages 47-68)

Molly and Vivian share a bond through their orphaned states.

Molly stifles her own bluntness in order to get along with Vivian, and to see things from her point of view. Molly begins to change when she opens her mind and stops judging everyone from her own scarred and cynical point of view.

Though the reader knows more about Vivian’s past at this point, as she listens to Vivian’s reminiscences, Molly begins to think about a time and place different from her own and how Vivian’s experiences are different from hers, yet in some ways the same. Molly’s image of Vivian—rich, old, white—holds a mirror to the more expected prejudice that Vivian might have against Molly, the scary-looking Goth teenager in foster-care. By having prejudice operate in this unexpected way, the author draws attention to the absence of prejudice in Vivian and the presence of it in Molly.

Kline clearly wants her readers to imagine the ways in which they judge others in their own lives. Kline thus challenges the common assumption that people who appear very different from the outside can have nothing in common.