Garcia 1

Sophia Garcia

20 Mar 2022

ENGWR 301

Prof Marchak

Essay 1 Rough Draft

For our first essay, I chose to analyze the short story “Samuel” by Grace Paley. Written in

1974, this story follows four boys as the stand on top of a moving subway car. Some people

around them look in disappointment, while others daydream about times when they did it too. A

passenger in the train musters up the courage to say something to these boys, even though she

knows they will have a negative reaction to her. An unnamed man on the train is so angered by

their disrespect that he decides to stand up and pull the train's emergency cord—this is where the

climax happens. In pulling the cord, all the passengers shift, including the boy atop the train.

Samuel loses his balance, falls off of the top, and is crushed between two train cars. The story

ends with two train-men pulling his body from the tracks and a policeman telling Samuel’s

mother of the accident. His mother’s story starts here as she lives through the grief, has more

children, but realizes she will never replace Samuel.

In this story I saw two themes, bravery and danger. Taking a look at bravery, we could

say that the boys on top of the car were brave. While most people would call their actions

foolish. However, as a reader, imagining the boys atop the train reminds us of the thin line

between bravery and foolishness. The line exists throughout all of life, and it is our job to

balance on it. Taking a temp back from the obvious, the boys are not the only ones to show us
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bravery. The woman on the train, the only one who decided to say something to the boys, she is

brave. In her head, she knows the boys will not take her warning positively, nor will they have a

happy reaction to it. On top of that, she is embarrassed to speak to them, but her awareness

overcomes her in the moment as she decides their actions are too dangerous to continue. She

speaks when no one else does, that is brave.

Now that we’ve covered bravery, let’s take a dive into the danger aspect. I know we said

the boys standing on the train were brave, but it was also dangerous. That’s not a guess either,

someone’s life was lost due to this act. While this action is dangerous within itself, it reminds the

reader that sometimes life can be dangerous, but doing reckless and dangerous things can risk it

all. It was made clear that Samuel had done this thing many times before and, more than likely,

he would’ve survived it one more time had the unnamed man not gotten in the way. The man

pulling the cord was strictly out of anger. Anger can blind us and make us do dangerous things. If

the man were more capable of controlling his anger, he may not have pulled the cord, Samuel

may not have lost his grip or balance, he may not have fallen, and in the end he may have

survived another day.

Now I will say, it is very easy to identify a symbol in a story when it is put right in your

face— crows equal death and light equals life. However, in this story, there is no obvious

symbol. Digging deeper into my brain, I decided that the boys were the symbol in this story.

Playing off the theme of danger, the boys represent life in this story. Life is unknown, dangerous,

but mostly you can survive it. When acting fearlessly, adrenaline takes over and your brain

forgets the fight of flight. The boys on the train remind us, as readers, to do both: live life

dangerously but balance it with caution. When we are not cautious of all the dangers, including

people, we can become careless enough to lose our lives.

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For character analysis, I decided to take a dive into the man who pulled the cord. He is

described as a white man and has no identifiable traits; This fact makes him a flat and static

character. He is the obvi antagonist who feels anger, disguise, and disapproval towards the boys

on the train. He seems to be put in the story to simply cause harm because his life was different

from Samuel’s. Unlike the other passengers, he cannot remember a time where he acted the same

ways the boys did—so much so that he finds himself disgusted while watching the boys on top

of the train. His actions in the story were driven by anger and he was the ultimate reason Samuel

died. By Grace Payley stating that the man looked at the boys for a couple seconds before pulling

the cord, she zooms into his true motives behind his dangerous actions. As we know, Samuel was

doing something dangerous, but without the man’s interference, chances are he would’ve

survived.

In the end, I chose to analyze “Samuel” because I felt it was the most complex and it

made me think. The story’s theme and symbols were not thrown in your face, requiring more

complex and critical thinking. Fiction is my favorite genre, and it was fun analyzing it, in depth,

for the first time.