Strangers On A Train

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1950

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Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary

Bruno's mother, Elsie, looks at the laugh lines on her face in the mirror as Bruno contemplates "an idea, bigger and closer than any idea he had ever known...the time was now" (58). The previous night, while Elsie's friends partied and played pranks, Bruno plotted a murder. Elsie fails to persuade Bruno to come to Reno with her, imploring him "not to do anything [he] shouldn't" in her absence; meanwhile, he plans the "perfect murder" (59).

Chapter 11 Summary

Bruno awakens, hungover, in the Plaza. After breakfasting and dressing at his hotel, he pockets a piece of paper on which he has inscribed his plan, which he will execute that night. He buys a drink, to steady his nerves, and is interrupted by a group of acquaintances on his way to the train. On board, Bruno naps and enjoys a meal. Charged with anticipation, he reads the description of Miriam, towards whom he feels antipathy: "he hated her already" (67). By contrast, Bruno thinks Guy is "the most worthy fellow he had ever met" (68). Arriving in Metcalf, Bruno feels a newfound sense of purpose. He looks up Miriam in the telephone book and hails a taxi.

Chapter 12 Summary

Bruno arrives at 1235 Magnolia Street, Miriam's house, and observes her leaving in a car with two men. Bruno tails them in a taxi until they reach an amusement park. Bruno watches Miriam from a distance and even rides a merry-go-round with her and her friends. Miriam's group takes a pleasure boat to an island in the middle of a nearby lake, pursued by Bruno. In the darkness, Bruno strangles Miriam, and exits unseen as cries of alarm sound behind him when her body is discovered. Unhurriedly, Bruno leaves the amusement park and drinks three glasses of rye in a bar nearby. Bruno thinks of Guy as he waits for the train, debating whether to visit Guy's house or a brothel.

Chapters 10-12 Analysis

In the context of the 1948-50 recession, the dead bull installed in the hotel bar by Elsie's friends may hint at a "bull market", “dead” in the wake of World War II. It is unclear at the opening of Chapter 11 which man–Guy or Bruno–is under discussion, heralding the bond between them that is about to be created by the first murder. Their symbiosis is further marked when Bruno dresses like Guy.

Bruno reflects that“[a] sense of purpose, strange and sweet to him, carried him along in an irresistible current" (66). This newfound purpose is symbolized by the train. Bruno at this moment embodies Freud's theory of the death drive: "Death was only one more adventure untried. If it came on some perilous business, so much the better. Nearest, he thought, was the time he had driven a racing car blindfolded on a straight road with the gas pedal on the floor" (69).

Both Bruno and Guy are machine-like in relation to their murders. Bruno is described as "a tireless automaton." His charged energy is then discharged in Miriam's murder, which has a faintly sexual undertone. The murder takes place in "a neckers' paradise," and Bruno wonders whether Miriam would be “at it tonight” (79), and suddenly desires a prostitute more strongly “than ever before in his life" (84). Later, he muses, "the fact that she was a female had given him greater enjoyment. No, he did not therefore conclude that his pleasure had partaken of the sexual" (107). Despite his vaguely homoerotic attraction to Guy, there is a carnality to Bruno's murder of Miriam.