Train Dreams

Gladys Grainier, formerly Olding, is the protagonist’s wife. She is loving and honest, as well as knowledgeable and practical, and in many ways, serves as an archetypal guide for Grainier. When she agrees to marry him, she adores Grainier. However, when they kiss the first time, it is her truthfulness, not her romantic nature, that kicks in. She says, “You got my mouth flat against my teeth” (38). Although she likes Grainier, she is honest in her assessment of the kiss, highlighting this trait as fundamental to her character. She tells him what is wrong with it, so they can try again, folding her honesty in with a lack of judgment. Despite her brutal honesty, she loves Grainier. When he returns from work one day, he brings medicine for her illness, and she is grateful for this kindness and his help with the chores.

Additionally, Gladys is more knowledgeable than her husband. Grainier asks her questions about the baby getting medicine by nursing, and she responds with certainty, “Of course she can” (8). By saying “of course,” Gladys indicates that she knows this to be a fact, but condescension is also implied, as if Robert should have known this too. The same tone continues when he asks if the baby knows as much as a puppy. Gladys responds with authority. The text implies that it is typical for Grainier to defer to her, for “he waited for her to explain what this meant. She often thought ahead of him” (9). Because Gladys “thought ahead” of him, Grainier admits that she “often” is quicker thinking and has knowledge he does not.

When Gladys returns in spirit form, she still embodies these characteristics, imparting knowledge of what happened during the fire. On that day, she straps the girl to her chest and takes few possessions with her, illustrating her efficient and practical approach to decision-making. When she treks to the river, she again demonstrates her practical nature: “Needing a hand to steady her along the rocky bluff as they descended, she tossed away the Bible rather than the chocolates” (78). Given the choice between keeping a text representative of her faith in God or food that could help her survive, Gladys opted for the chocolate. It was a move made from necessity. Furthermore, after she fell, Gladys had the wherewithal “to pluck at the knot across her bodice until the child was free to crawl away and fend for itself” (78). With her own death imminent, the woman thought quickly and freed Kate, so the girl had a chance at survival. Gladys’ practicality represents the quick and decisive thinking needed to survive on the frontier. Ultimately, by sharing this memory, Gladys imparts one final piece of knowledge to her husband: that their daughter survived.

Four months old at the start of the novella, Kate is the Grainiers’ daughter. Despite her infancy, she unnerves her father with one look: “In the dark he felt his daughter’s eyes turned on him like a cornered brute’s. It was only his thoughts tricking him, but it poured something cold down his spine. He shuddered and pulled the quilt up to his neck” (9). Grainier senses something animalistic in his daughter, comparing her look to that of a cornered animal. Instead of feeling love from his baby, terror seizes him in the form of coldness and trembling. This look is so memorable that “all of his life Robert Grainier was able to recall this very moment on this very night” (9). The exchange between father and daughter is unforgettable in its unusual nature, and it demonstrates that from her infancy, Kate is unlike other children.

Grainier’s uneasiness with this interaction foreshadows the wildness she possesses as the wolf-girl. When Gladys’s spirit visits him after her death, Grainier discovers that “Kate had escaped the fire” and “was free to crawl away and fend for itself” (78-79). The use of the word “itself” instead of “herself” suggests that the child has already evolved from a little human girl to an animal surviving in the wild. Furthermore, this vignette is placed immediately after the one in which Kootenai Bob talks about the dangerous wolf-girl, foreshadowing that Kate and the animal-child are linked. As the text reveals, they are one and the same, which Grainier discovers the night the wolves race through his yard, leaving her behind. Initially, “the creature didn’t move and seemed hurt. The general shape of her impressed him right away that this was a person—a female—a child” (100). The reference to her as both “creature” and “child” is reminiscent of Grainier’s thoughts about Kate’s look when she was a baby. This is reinforced when Grainier notes that “Kate she was, but Kate no longer” (101). Physically, she looks like his daughter, but her life with the pack has transformed her into a wild animal. Later, when she sleeps, Grainier watches Kate: “What was it about her face that seemed so wolflike, so animal, even as she slept? He couldn’t say. The face just seemed to have no life behind it when the eyes were closed. As if the creature would have no thoughts other than what it saw” (103). The shift from calling Kate “she” to “it” marks the loss of her humanity. Through its portrayal of Kate, the novella explores the tension between human civilization and the wilderness from a different perspective, demonstrating how thin the line between the two actually is. Through Kate’s situation, the text suggests that when people are bereft of civilization, they revert to an animalistic instinct to survive.