Blonska, a Russian émigrée, functions as one of the novel’s clearest moral centers. At the age of 60, she is bent like “a question mark” (17), illustrating the physical effects of poverty. The 200 francs she has hidden in her corset is reserved for charity work, while her frugality is so extreme that she sleeps on station platforms and hesitates to buy food.

As the passenger most capable of seeing other people clearly, Blonska embodies The Possibilities of Connections with Strangers. Throughout the journey, she notices what others miss: Cécile’s hidden pregnancy, Mado’s dangerous intent, and the emotional wounds concealed beneath casual conversation. Donoghue uses her character to explore a form of moral attention grounded in practical commitment to other human beings. Although she is the one passenger who guesses what Mado’s lunch bucket holds, Donoghue emphasizes how little control this knowledge provides. Once Blonska understands that the bucket holds a bomb, she understands that any direct attempt to intervene could trigger the explosion prematurely. All she can do is remain beside Mado, knitting, talking, observing, and trying to hold the fragile social fabric of the carriage together for as long as possible.

Donoghue gives Blonska a fully developed political philosophy that exists in productive tension with Mado’s extremism, having spent decades among Russian émigré radicals and Parisian charitable ladies, and lost faith in both. When Mado expresses contempt for charity, Blonska replies with moral practicality: “But ask a rusty cog if it would like to be oiled. Ask a hungry child if a loaf might be better than nothing” (147). The metaphor reveals the core of her worldview. Blonska does not believe small acts of care will solve systemic injustice, but she insists they still matter profoundly to the people immediately suffering. Her politics reject both revolutionary purity and comfortable passivity. Her quotation of the journalist Lazare on Captain Dreyfus, that “justice is a long game” (146) captures her belief that incremental efforts can eventually secure lasting social change.  

Blonska’s philosophy is demonstrated during Cécile’s labor as her actions embody her practical form of politics. She responds with immediate competence, kneeling in the “gaudy puddle” between the laboring woman’s thighs (230), and realizing the shoulder is stuck. She also chooses to ask Mado for help—hoping that the intimate human encounter will dissuade her from detonating the bomb. The decision reflects her belief that people remain morally reachable through acts of care even after ideology has distorted them.

Guillaume, the 35-year-old driver of Engine 721 is a third-generation railwayman, and one of the best drivers in the Company of the West. His role in the novel is to make a precise point about how the train crash happens. His Christmas bonus, up to a full month’s pay, depends on punctuality (12), and his fuel-saving bonus depends on hitting “the Company notch” (90). After the unscheduled Briouze stop leaves the train eight minutes behind schedule, he attempts to recover the lost time on the straight run to Paris. The accident occurs because a skilled and conscientious worker behaves exactly as the system has trained him to behave. Through Guillaume, Donoghue demonstrates that the most dangerous forms of technological progress emerge from institutional pressures that make risk appear reasonable, professional, and necessary.

Guillaume’s relationship with stoker Victor Garnier is exceptionally close. They share the footplate, lodgings, and night embraces that “the two of them never mention to a soul, not even to each other” (244). This intimacy is expressed in the texture of how they work, displaying shared labor, synchronized movements, and mutual trust. Their relationship gives emotional force to the crash. When the air brake fails, Guillaume’s shout of “Jump!” carries the weight of a love and partnership the official record will never recognize. After jumping, he lands stunned and weeping, certain Victor is dead.

Guillaume survives the subsequent inquiry with a suspended sentence, and returns to the rails. This outcome reinforces the novel’s systemic critique of The Human Cost of Technological Progress. The railway industry cannot meaningfully punish Guillaume because his actions were inseparable from the logic the institution itself produced. He becomes simultaneously responsible and representative: personally involved in the disaster, yet also one of the people most exploited by the structures causing it.

Victor is the stoker on Engine 721, younger than Guillaume and physically the smaller of the pair. His early self-description of himself and Guillaume as “one man in two bodies” (32), initially appears to describe the practical intimacy of their working partnership. Driver and stoker must move in absolute coordination, reading one another’s rhythms instinctively while sharing cramped physical space for hours at a time. Yet as the novel progresses, the phrase acquires broader emotional significance. Victor and Guillaume are bound together not only professionally but bodily and emotionally, their lives organized around the same engine, the same risks, and the same economic demands. Alongside this technical and economic dimension, Donoghue grounds Victor emotionally through his relationship with Guillaume. The intimacy of their shared lodgings, the cots butted together, and embraces is presented as emerging from their close working partnership. The two men’s physical synchronization on the footplate mirrors the emotional dependence beneath it.

Victor works out the arithmetic of the train’s progress, constantly measuring the demands of the journey in coal, steam, and wages. He calculates that “it costs a kilo of coal to turn six litres of water to steam” (123), and recognizes that the Christmas bonus of 40 percent is “the difference between Joséphine’s sigh and her smile, the gap between getting by and feeling rich” (33). This observation emphasizes how railway efficiency determines whether families experience security or anxiety, comfort or deprivation. At the same time, Victor realizes that the Company’s dual incentives of “speed” and “thrift” are incompatible” (32).

Victor is the character through whom The Human Cost of Technological Progress is most clearly expressed as an economic system. Donoghue presents his agreement to Guillaume’s proposal to speed after Dreux as the inevitable result of these pressures rather than a reckless decision. The novel traces his incremental logic as he convinces himself that speeding might even be safer because tighter adherence to the schedule means fewer signaling errors, and “if the bosses really didn’t condone speeding, they wouldn’t offer an extra month of pay in December for keeping to the schedule” (195). The cumulative effect is that an experienced stoker rationalizes the danger of breaking safety rules. When the Westinghouse air brake (the standard fail-safe pneumatic system on French express trains) refuses to engage outside Montparnasse, Victor’s first guess is that Guillaume “applied it so very late at such high speed that the air brake’s just no match for the massive momentum of Engine 721” (234). The diagnosis, moments before impact, reveals his knowledge and experience while highlighting the disastrous consequences of the decisions he and Guillaume made.

Henry Tanner, a Black American painter, has achieved a measure of artistic and social success in Paris, while burdened by the lingering impact of racism. His decision to travel Second Class rather than First Class illustrates his racial vigilance. France may lack the rigid segregation laws of the United States, yet Henry understands that formal equality does not erase social tension. He reflects that if he travelled First Class, “he’d be tense all the way to Paris. So why borrow trouble?” (28). The phrase “borrow trouble” captures the exhausting anticipatory labor that structures his life. Henry constantly evaluates spaces in terms of risk, comfort, visibility, and potential humiliation. Through his character, Donoghue exposes racism as a continuous psychic cost paid in caution, self-monitoring, and restraint.

Henry’s hidden internal strain erupts physically during the ticket inspection scene. When the guard questions him about his ticket, blood pours so profusely from his nose, he wonders if he is dying. The bleeding externalizes years of accumulated racial stress, revealing how deeply vigilance is embedded within him. His explanation to Marcelle illustrates the profound impact of inherited trauma. He recounts the story his mother told him about how they were both thrown off a Washington streetcar during a snowstorm after a man on the streetcar pulled back her veil and used a racial slur. Henry calls is memory of the incident “false” because he was too young to remember it. However, Marcelle’s response, “Not false. Handed down” (172), emphasizes that the body remembers what the conscious mind cannot.

Henry’s long conversation with Marcelle gives him a release valve for his buried trauma. Their interaction also highlights Henry’s role as a character suspended between visibility and isolation. As a Black artist in Paris, he experiences contradictory forms of attention. On one hand, he is exoticized and demeaned through labels such as “the Darkie Painter” (154). On the other, he faces immense pressure from Black newspapers and communities that describe him as “the Hope of the Race” (154). Henry’s confession to Marcelle that the second pressure can feel as suffocating as the first reveals his exhaustion with being interpreted constantly through racial meaning.

Henry and Marcelle’s connection illustrates The Possibilities of Connections with Strangers, demonstrating that profound recognition between the characters is possible within the enclosed social space of the train. Yet Donoghue also highlights the fragility and limitations of the encounter. By the time the train crashes, and they disembark, Marcelle has let go of Henry’s hand to protect both their reputations.

Marcelle is 22, training as a physiologist, and the daughter of Severiano de Heredia, the Cuban-born politician once mocked in the press as “the Chocolate Deputy” (154). Her father’s instruction, “Marcelle, don’t let their foolishness get in the way of the work” (154), is her guiding principle. She is defined by her commitment to scientific work, typing her supervisor’s research notes on a Dactyle in the Second-Class carriage. She has grown to expect that her gender and race constantly shape how her intellect is received.

Marcelle’s encounter with the Sarazin-Levassors in First-Class tests provides a practical use for her training. Looking at Jeanne—pale, easily bruised, prone to nosebleeds, sweating at night—Marcelle mentally assembles these symptoms into a likely diagnosis of leukemia. Yet her gentle inquiry whether Jeanne has been tested for “milkiness” in the blood (96) meets with defensive outrage from. Louise. When Jeanne’s mother calls her “a stupid girl with notions” (96), Marcelle retreats mortified. The scene reveals the limitations placed upon knowledge when it crosses social and emotional boundaries. Marcelle is medically correct as the Author’s Note records that Jeanne died the next year. However, Donoghue underscores that her knowledge cannot overcome navigate class expectations, gendered assumptions, and the etiquette governing who is permitted to speak with authority

Instead of dwelling on Louise’s misguided rejection of her help, Marcelle subjects her own motives to scrutiny. Speaking later to Henry, she says: “I dread to think that what made me speak up was my longing to be right. The thrill of knowing—as if I’m the only one in the world with the solution to the puzzle” (226). The admission highlights Marcelle’s insight into medical authority, as she recognizes that scientific curiosity and genuine compassion can become entangled with ego and intellectual vanity. Her further question—whether diagnosis without cure is even a kindness—deepens this tension. Marcelle understands that identifying illness does not necessarily alleviate suffering. This point is illustrated when Louise apologizes to Marcelle, who recommends palliatives that may ease Jeanne’s symptoms without offering hope of recovery.

Maurice, the seven-and-a-half-year-old boy, traveling alone from Granville to Dreux to meet his father, provides a narrative perspective of curiosity and wonder. While the adult passengers have largely absorbed the assumptions and contradictions of industrial modernity, Maurice sees them freshly enough to question them. His observations repeatedly expose the artificial systems governing railway life precisely because he has not yet learned to treat those systems as natural. In this sense, he functions as both observer and disruptor: his questions unsettle adults because they reveal truths everyone else has quietly agreed not to notice.

The novel introduces Maurice’s role through the motif of clocks and railway time. When the Breton guard sends him out to look at the platform clock, which is set five minutes ahead of the clock inside, Maurice cannot accept that the discrepancy is a valid way to help latecomers. The train, he reasons, “should set off on time and leave the dawdlers in the dust” (6). His indignation is the novel’s clearest indictment of how the railway manipulates time to align with its goals.

Maurice’s conversations with adults repeatedly produce moments of destabilization, underscoring The Human Cost of Technological Progress. His questions force the other characters to confront inconsistencies they habitually smooth over. When the priest claims that solar time is the truer measure, Maurice follows this logic to its conclusion, asking, if Granville’s station clock pretends late passengers are on time, “won’t you be late when you get off the train in Montparnasse?” (56-57). The priest cannot answer directly, diverting attention with a homily about sin. Maurice’s question exposes that, within the railway’s system, convenience and a lie amount to the same thing.