88 pages • 2 hours read
Christina Baker KlineOrphan Train
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Vivian Daly
Vivian’s singular characteristic is her self-containment; she carefully chooses what she shares with others at all times. For example, the defining moment of her life comes when, overwhelmed by grief after the death of her husband, Dutchy, she gives her new-born daughter away. That single decision defines her life from that point on, much as being an orphan had before that. However, she never tells her second husband that she had a child. She forces herself to live without confiding her hurt and pain to anyone for nearly 70 years. She believes that she must live with the consequences of her decision: she never has another child, and never tries to contact the child she gave up. As a result, when Molly enters her life, Vivian is living in a type of self-imposed emotional isolation.
Despite the repeated traumas of her childhood, which makes the reader sympathetic to her character, Vivian is not an easy character to relate to or like. She is not a traditional “heroine;” no reader would want to emulate her life. For most of her life after she loses her husband, she resists growing or developing. She cannot handle any more pain, so she finds a safe relationship with an undemanding man that allows her to experience a form of happiness, but her life is muted and small compared to the intensity of her feelings for those she has lost.
Her relationship with Molly is a turning point for Vivian. By confessing her pain and her secrets to Molly, Vivian allows growth and change back in her life. She demonstrates this change when she takes Molly in, buys a computer to communicate with other orphans, and finds her lost daughter. Vivian rejoins the land of the living after a decades-long period of shutting out the world. At one time, Vivian saw her ghosts as a source of safety and comfort; now she sees that she is strong enough to risk real, new relationships. No one who is truly alive can stay stuck in one place. Though she may be soon to leave this world, Vivian will leave it as a fully engaged and functioning person, truly living once again.
Molly Ayer
Molly, aged 17, is the novel’s second narrator and, like Vivian, is a difficult though sympathetic character. Like Vivian, her prickly and defensive exterior is the result of severe childhood trauma: the death of her father and the loss of her mother to drug addiction. Like Vivian, Molly is truly on her own in the world at a very young age. The reader clearly sees that her emotional distance and Goth exterior are tactics to keep people away. Molly has learned that it’s better to keep everyone away than to be hurt. Just as Vivian turns to the safety of her house and her relationship with her ghosts, Molly attempts to erect a wall around herself by adopting an intimidating, tough appearance.
When Vivian meets her, Molly is living in her twelfth foster home and it takes a woman with Vivian’s past to recognize a fellow-traveler. Familiar with the behavior of a traumatized child, Vivian is unperturbed by Molly’s appearance or her blunt way of speaking. Vivian immediately Molly’s value and offers to help her with her community service hours.
Molly recognizes that Vivian’s wealth—which at first she is in awe of—is merely another shell, like her own Goth appearance, used to keep other people at bay. Molly further recognizes that Vivian is unable, at her age, to get rid of all of the belongings in her attic. She’ll soon be dead, so why bother getting rid of them now? As Molly allows Vivian’s story into her heart and mind, she gradually drops her own hard, outer shell—the nose ring and the skunk-striped hair—and realizes that Vivian’s life, for all of its appearance of privilege, has been at least as difficult as her own. This compassionate insight allows Molly to grow up and to form an indispensable, and emotionally authentic, relationship for the first time.
Through her relationship with Vivian and her increased self-knowledge, Molly is also able to maintain and deepen her relationship with her boyfriend, Jack. Though their relationship is well-established at the beginning of the novel, Molly’s increased self-awareness allows their relationship to grow.
As a result of her increasing confidence, Molly develops a strong sense of her identity as a Penobscot Indian. She takes the stories she remembers from her father and studies the Penobscot tribe in her American history class. More certain of who she is, Molly can drop the false protection of the Goth façade; she doesn’t need it anymore because has grown up enough to protect herself, to know who to trust, and to develop real friendships.
Dutchy
Dutchy is a street-wise but true-orphan. When he and Vivian meet on the orphan train, they instantly bond with one another. At that time, he is 12 and she is 9. They form a little family on that journey as they take care of the infant Carmine. When they accidentally meet again as adults, in Milwaukee, it seems like fate to Vivian.
Their relationship and marriage have a fairy-tale quality, possibly because they were only able to enjoy being together for three years, including the year he was away at war. Vivian’s grief at Dutchy’s death overwhelms her, forcing her to make the difficult decision to give up their child. Vivian can gloss over the difficulties that they might have faced in the future, because their relationship was never tested over time. For Vivian, Dutchy remains a sweet boy, a loving husband, a musical ghost.
Jack Gallant
Molly’s boyfriend and Terry’s son, Jack is optimistic and upbeat. Though he clearly has his own emotional scars, the result of being abandoned by his father, Jack is steady and open-hearted. He is protective of his mother, and her position with Vivian, though he risks that relationship to try to help Molly.
His open-hearted optimism contrasts sharply with Molly’s more negative and hesitant approach to life. Yet, through Jack, she is able to see that his optimism is a choice. It’s not that he hasn’t had difficulties, it’s that he chooses to see things in the way he does. She learns this valuable lesson in her relationship with him. She also sees that though they may disagree and have arguments, Jack doesn’t drop her or abandon her. She begins to see that some people will stick around through the tough stuff.
Chester Sorenson
A local Minnesota representative of the Christian Aid Society, Mr. Sorenson sees Vivian through three family changes: the Byrne family, the Grote family, and finally the Nielsen family. His character reveals the flaws in a social system that relies on charity as a safety net, particularly for children. There is nothing that Mr. Sorenson can do for Niamh/Dorothy/Vivian and very little protection he can offer her. The Society asks that adoptive parents send the children to school, and feed and clothe them properly, but there are no consequences if those things do not happen, or worse, if the children are more seriously abused.
When Dorothy is sexually assaulted by Mr. Grote, Mr. Sorenson attempts to smooth over the situation, rather than protect Dorothy and remove her from the home; his instinct is to believe that Dorothy is mistaken. Only Miss Larsen’s intervention prevents her from being returned to the Grotes’.
Mr. Sorenson proves himself to be of very little use. In In the end, Mrs. Murphy connects Dorothy/Vivian with the Nielsens. She knows Mrs. Nielsen from her quilting circle, and she is the one who brokers the meeting between Dorothy and the Nielsens in her own home. Mr. Sorenson’s multiple failures as a protector and as a representative of the Society display both the good intentions and the potentially horrifying results of the Society’s work. In this way, Mr. Sorenson acts as a foil through which Kline can depict the historical reality of the orphan train riders.
Related Titles
By Christina Baker Kline
