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52 pages 1 hour read

August Wilson

Two Trains Running

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1993

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Symbols & Motifs

Aunt Ester

While the Century Cycle does not follow a continuous storyline, the plays exist in the same world, as evidenced by the occasional repeated characters, familial relationships, or references across plays. The most significant repeated reference is to Aunt Ester, an Black woman who lives in the neighborhood and claims to be 349 years old in 1969 during Two Trains Running. The characters take this information with varying degrees of skepticism, and audiences likely did as well, since this play contains the first mention of Aunt Ester in the plays that Wilson had written as of 1990. Her claim is later semi-substantiated in Gem of the Ocean (2003) (Wilson’s penultimate Century Cycle play in terms of writing order, but the first in the decade chronology), which takes audiences back to 1904 and the beginning of the 20th century. Gem of the Ocean centers on Aunt Ester and brings her onstage so audiences can witness her mysticism and soul-washing as a literality rather than a metaphor. In King Hedley II (1999), set in 1985, Aunt Ester—again an offstage character—dies, supposedly at the age of 366. And in Radio Golf (2005), set in 1997 (the final installment of the Cycle, both chronologically and in writing order), Aunt Ester’s house is set to be demolished for the sake of urban development.

Aunt Ester, whose name sounds like “ancestor,” provides a throughline for the Cycle as a representation and embodiment of Black history and cultural memory in the United States. Her age, mentioned repeatedly throughout the plays, places her birthdate in 1691, which is the year that marked the beginning of the official trans-Atlantic slave trade. Her address, 1839 Wylie, is a real plot that exists in the Pittsburgh Hill District, but the number 1839 references the year of the Amistad slave ship mutiny, in which the 53 captured Africans aboard fought back against their captors and killed them. They were brought to the United States and tried for murder and piracy, but they were exonerated on the grounds that they had been captured illegally. In 1841, those who were still alive sailed back to their homes with a group of missionaries headed for Africa. The case was a turning point for the institution of slavery because it shined a national spotlight on the cruelty and dehumanization inherent in the slave trade. It was also a significant incident in which those in slavery rose up and won. Therefore, Aunt Ester’s guidance comes from a place of Black historical memory, which Wilson has infused with mysticism. She sends her visitors to throw their money in the river because she is not for sale, and she has no help for people who come because they want money, because she doesn’t help them sell themselves.

Some scholars have criticized Wilson’s portrayal of women as fitting into stereotypes of disempowered Black womanhood, but the women in the play (onstage and off) exemplify Wilson’s subversion of those stereotypes. Risa, for example, subverts the hypersexualized “Jezebel” trope. She has permanently scarred her body to reject the male gaze. Risa confounds the men, because they see her as a woman who should fulfill all the fantasies of young Black womanhood—she cooks, she has domestic skills, she’s sexually attractive—but she doesn’t want a man and has proven this by cutting her legs. Memphis sees this as a mental illness, while Wolf is certain that a “good man” can fix her. They don’t see this as Risa taking agency in her life. Aunt Ester destabilizes the “Mammy” stereotype of the obedient slave woman who devotes her life to caring for white babies; Aunt Ester cares for the Black community, and she is spiritually powerful. She obeys no one, and in fact, those who seek her help must obey her if they want her help to work. She is a mother rather than a mammy, and she helps those in need to connect to the continuous history of Black strength and fortitude that their ancestors showed by surviving the middle passage.

Beans, Ham, and Other Food

The play takes place in a restaurant that seems to only ever serve beans and cornbread. Fresh from prison, Sterling has spent five years eating beans and is more than ready for some homecooked meatloaf or fried chicken, but Memphis hasn’t gone shopping, and the fried chicken never seems to be ready. Reluctantly, Sterling settles for coffee in hopes that there will be something better, but later he flirts with Risa as he compliments her beans. Later, in the second act, Risa is making short ribs, and Wolf, smelling them, wants to order some—but again, all they have ready is beans and cornbread, which Wolf decides with disappointment to eat while he waits. Hambone wanders into the restaurant daily, always asking for his ham and always receiving beans in return. Although Memphis isn’t the one who owes the ham, and feeding Hambone at all is a kindness, he is still perpetually disappointed that he doesn’t have his ham. The menu board is central to the set, mentioned in the stage directions before almost every scene, making promises that the restaurant doesn’t follow through. But the customers keep returning and hoping for better, although they never mention any other nearby restaurant options. It’s notable that the daily winning number is also posted on the menu board, another way of showing customers what they want and can’t have that also tempts them to keep trying their luck.

The constant tantalization of delicious meals at the restaurant recalls Tantalus of Greek mythology, who, in the underworld, was stuck in a lake with water up to his chin and perfect fruit trees above his head. But when he reached for one, the wind would blow the branches out of reach, and the water would dry up when he tried to drink. For Tantalus, this was devised as eternal torture. For the characters in the play, this experience is their way of life. Their hunger is both literal and spiritual, and they constantly want what they can see or smell but can’t touch. They eat to survive but are never given the chance to be satisfied. For most of the characters, this is an issue of money and their inability to earn enough to go somewhere else and buy whatever they want. They spend the money that might go to better food to play the numbers, placing their desires to be rich over their need for food, but they rarely see a return. But the metaphorical hunger that they all feel isn’t really about money. They just believe that money can buy anything that will feed that wanting. In the case of West, he set aside all of the pleasure and hope in his life when his wife died and put everything he is into making money. But money doesn’t feed him either, because essentially, he’s a lonely widower who misses his wife and has closed himself off. He asks for sugar and is then afraid to use it, just as he makes money and then is afraid to buy new shoes. The endless desires that define all of their lives are often for things that are impossible to obtain—at least without risk, which protects them all from having to fight for the things that are.

Ham has further significance in terms of symbolism. First, Lutz is Jewish, and the fact that he carries ham at his meat market and values it higher than chicken suggests that he isn’t kosher and has therefore placed money over faith. Hambone’s endless pursuit raises the question of why Lutz won’t simply give him the ham he earned. There is also the mystery of why Lutz goes to the Funeral Home to pay his respects during Hambone’s viewing; the audience never learns whether it’s a matter of his regret, of having felt an unexpressed connection to the man who came to see him daily, or of guilt and compassion in hindsight. Ham also references the biblical Ham, whose father, Noah, cursed Ham’s lineage that “a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” Although the Bible makes no mention of race or skin color, this passage has been exploited as Biblical justification for slavery. Hambone asks for his ham every day, but the ham is far more important than as a food; Lutz can refuse to pay what he owes because Hambone is Black. Hambone has no legal recourse, even if he had the wherewithal to make one, because no judge will take Hambone’s word over Lutz’s. Hambone is asking for fairness and to be treated like any other person, which is a level of respect that must be given willingly.

Two Trains

The play’s title references Memphis’s statement: “All I got to do is find my way down to the train depot. They got two trains running every day. I used to know the schedule” (31). Thirty-eight years prior to the action of the play, Memphis ran away from Jackson, Mississippi. He had bought a small piece of farmland that was sold as having no water on it, but Memphis had dug down for six months, 60 feet into the ground, and found a well. Unfortunately for Memphis, this meant that the prior owners, who were white, could activate a clause that made the sale null and void. Memphis had tried to fight in court, but white mobs intimidated him into leaving by brutally killing his mule and burning his crops. Leaving town was undoubtedly the only reason that Memphis survived, but for 38 years, Memphis has promised himself that he will go back to get justice and reclaim his land. All the characters have made choices that landed them where they are. For instance, Holloway had the chance to follow Malcolm X but chose to follow Aunt Ester and avoid the fight. There are two metaphorical trains running every day: Memphis as well as the other characters can either willfully stay where they are or decide to progress into unknown territory. Whether it would be wise for Memphis to go back into the deep South and start a fight with a white man is certainly worth questioning, but the first time he made the choice to get on the train, he wasn’t willing to walk through fire to get home. Now he is.

The characters are all faced with dichotomies that they must choose between. The play’s epigraph quotes a traditional saying: “If the train don’t hurry, there’s gonna be some walking done” (5). The choice to make no choice becomes less and less tenable. Memphis attempts to dig in his heels and refuse to give up his building, knowing that the city almost certainly won’t meet his price—but in the end, he has no power to say yes or no. He can’t stay where he is. He can move backward and go to Jackson, or he can move forward and start his new diner. Memphis opts to go backward and then forward, but there’s no guarantee that he’ll make it back to have the chance. Risa can choose to move forward with Wolf or Sterling, or she can make no choice and stay where she is—but the restaurant is disappearing, and she has feelings for Sterling, so she needs to make a decision for her life. Movement has become a necessity, both for the characters and for those who are standing around and waiting for a train to take them somewhere in the fight for rights and equality. The play says that it’s time to stop waiting for the lottery or for angels or for a stubborn butcher to do the right thing. The train may not come at all, and the path will undoubtedly be difficult, but the hard work of walking will have to be done because the destination is not optional. 

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