Father Returning Home

The commuter train symbolizes the disconnection and alienation of the modern, urban, working world. Ironically, the commuter train could easily symbolize a respite from the impersonal and soul-numbing oppression of the working world. After all, it is public transportation. As such, the commuter train brings together the victims of the rat race culture. The train could provide commuters, who take the same train at the same hour each day, the chance to meet and greet familiar faces, conduct impromptu and convivial conversations, share stories about families, and even commiserate about their work.

Here, however, the city’s commuter train symbolizes the quiet desperation of the commuters themselves. The father waits at the station, bathed in the sickly yellow of the station’s security lighting. The commuters themselves wait in insulating silence. There is no effort made to break through the silence with even the casual blather of chit chat as they wait for the train. They are tired, their energy and passion sapped.

On the train itself, the father sits alone, never looking out at the world, never looking about at the other commuters. He sits uncomfortably, his shoes and pants soggy from the monsoon rain. He is in his own world, anesthetized against the real world, where the “suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes” (Line 3).