Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Train Dreams,’ Joel Edgerton plays the role of a man whose life takes some tragic twists and turns. The story unfolds over the course of several decades, during which we get to know the protagonist, Robert Grainier, from his childhood to adulthood, as he attempts to build a life for himself, and the tragedy that completely changes his life. The introspective nature of the story gives it a realistic tone, which intensifies with each scene. Yet, the film exhibits a touch of the supernatural, which leads to some very compelling questions at the end of the movie. The answers to these questions aren’t necessarily so simple and depend a lot on what the protagonist hopes to find from his experiences. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Train Dreams Plot Synopsis
Robert Grainier never knew his parents. He doesn’t know how old he is because he never knew his date of birth. For him, life only began when, as a child, he came to Fry, Idaho. A family took him in, and from a young age, he saw violence, beginning with the mass deportation of Chinese immigrants from the town. After skipping school, he tried to find meaning in various things, but never felt like he fit in anywhere. It is when he crosses paths with Gladys that things start to shift in his life. They become quite close in a short span of time, and soon, they are married. Robert’s work as a railroad worker takes him away from his house for extended intervals.
He doesn’t like it, especially after he and Gladys have a daughter, Katie, but this is how he provides for his family, so when the next season comes, he has to pack a bag and leave. Along the way, he meets all kinds of people, but forms a special bond with a man named Arn Peeples. All this while, he is haunted by the ghost of a Chinese man, who once used to be his coworker. Eventually, he and Gladys devise a plan to halt this yearly migration and start something of their own. For that, he must take on one more job. This is supposed to be his last time away from home. But when he comes back, a tragedy awaits him. It turns out that a forest fire has ravaged the whole area, including Robert’s house.
The whole place is burned to the ground, and there is no sign of his wife and daughter. The grief of losing them throws him into a depression, which becomes the talk of the town. Eventually, his friend, Ignatius Jack, visits him and helps bring him back to the world of the living. Robert picks himself up and rebuilds the house. To the world, it looks like he has finally accepted his loss and is moving on, but secretly, he hopes that his wife and daughter will come back. In their absence, a stray dog and her pups become his only family. Later, he befriends a woman named Claire who comes to town for work. In her, he finds a kindred spirit, but even her friendship and company don’t change anything for Robert.
Who is the Girl? Is She Robert’s Daughter?
Robert had never really felt connected or that he belonged anywhere until he met Gladys. With their daughter, Katie, the family that he longed for was complete. So, when they both disappear after a forest fire, with Robert having no clue as to what happened to them, he feels adrift once again. What’s more heartbreaking about the situation is that he never really gets closure for his grief. He knows that they are gone, that they most likely died in the fire. But because he never finds their dead bodies, he continues to hold on to hope that somehow they survived, and that one day, they would return. This is why he stays in the place, rebuilding the house that was consumed by the fire. The hope and wait help him cling to life, and he is able to go on living.
Even as the years wear on, it does nothing to dampen his desire to see his wife and daughter again, which is why it is so easy for him to believe that the wild girl who has turned up at his door is his daughter. Before the girl’s arrival, Robert is gripped by a fever, in which he has a dream visitation from his wife. He sees Gladys in their house, suddenly becoming aware of the fire and running away with little Katie. On the way, she hits a log and falls to the ground, sustaining an injury that prevents her from getting up and running away from the fire. Katie, however, is still alive, standing in front of her mother and crying for help. When Robert wakes up from this dream, he is convinced that little Katie has somehow survived.
And then, the wild girl comes knocking at his door, and despite the impossibility of the situation, he tells himself that his daughter is back. Considering the circumstances under which she disappeared, it is highly unlikely that she survived. If she had, Robert would have found some trace of her. The whole town knew about him, so if someone found his daughter in the woods, they would have told him about it. Thus, there is a good chance that the girl is just someone who has grown up in the wild. It would be rather impossible for a child to survive on their own in the forest, which means that the child is under someone’s guardianship. She most likely strayed from her home, and her injury led her to seek help from the first house that she came across.
The next morning, when she found herself in a stranger’s house, she immediately left for home. There is also a possibility that the girl never really existed. Perhaps, she was an extension of Robert’s fever dream. His wife’s ghost showed him that Katie was left alive in the middle of the forest. So, if she survived the fire and lived in the forest, she must have been raised by the wolves whose howls were always in the background. This would explain the wild nature of the girl and why she appeared so battered and unruly. The next morning, when Robert woke up beside the bed, that was when his dream actually broke, which is why the girl was nowhere to be found. For Robert, however, given all the weird and unexplainable things that happened to him over the years, it was easier to imagine that his daughter had not only survived but also come back to him, even if she didn’t stay.
Does Robert Die? How?
Whether or not the wolf girl was real, Robert’s experience with her was real to him, and it, once again, ignited the fire of hope in his heart. The dream told him that his wife had died, but it told her that his daughter had survived, and meeting the wolf girl gave him hope. If she could return once, she could return again. He just had to keep waiting. And that’s what he does, for the most part. He puts food by his door every night, hoping that even if his daughter doesn’t come inside the house, she will at least not go hungry. As the years pass and age catches up with him, he continues to hold on to hope. At the same time, life goes on, and he experiences new things as well. He regularly takes the train to Spokane, passing by the bridge that he had helped build, and from which his Chinese coworker was thrown to his death. Robert sees the man’s death as a curse that has haunted him as well as the bridge, which is why perhaps it never lived up to the task it was built for.
In the city, with the high rises, the flashy stores, and the noise of television, he feels more out of place than anywhere else. It’s his way of keeping in touch with the world, and having had a glimpse of where things are going, he goes back to his cabin, where he continues to live the way he has always lived. He never takes things from the modern world to his home. This means he never has a telephone or a television. In fact, he doesn’t even own a mirror and only sees his reflection when he visits a show in town. His desire for solitude keeps him disconnected from other people, and the only friend that he has in his later years is Claire Thompson. He bonds with her over their shared understanding of grief and isolation. He keeps the love and memories of his wife and daughter, and is reminded of Katie when he watches a show about a wolf-boy. He thinks back to that night and the wolf girl, and can’t help but wonder what became of her. It tugs at the string of hope that has kept him tethered to the world and reminds him of all that he lost.
Another profound experience that he has is riding a biplane. It gives him a bird’s-eye view of the world, taking him away from the grounded life he has lived so far, and allows him to gain a different perspective, enabling him to see how he and everything else are just a speck in the grander scheme of things. It is in the sky, when he is away from the world, that he finally feels the connection that he had been looking for his entire life. He takes this feeling back home, to his cabin in the woods, where he continues to live till the end of his days. He doesn’t change his hermit-like nature, and spends the rest of his days isolated from the world he had denounced a long time ago. Eventually, old age takes him, and he dies in the house where he waited for Gladys and Katie’s return. He spent his entire life hoping to see them again, and it is with that hope that he passes away, quietly and unnoticed, just the way he had been most of his life.
Read More: Is Train Dreams Based on a True Story?
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