Strangers On A Train

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1950

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Chapters 4-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary

Guy walks home and is comforted by emotionally distancing himself from Miriam. He is greeted by his mother, from whom he also feels an emotional distance: "he thought of the gulf that separated his life from his mother's" (42). This emotional gulf is in part due to the contrast between her cheerful disposition and Guy’s, who prefers to “nurse his griefs" (41). He tells her he will not take the Palmyra job and is glad that she doesn't know how important it really is. Guy contemplates with "revulsion" the notion of Miriam accompanying him to the Palmyra Club, as she suggested. His thoughts leap from Miriam to Anne, who he tells his mother he will visit in Mexico. His mother muses that she thinks Guy is "happy again" (44).

Chapter 5 Summary

Anne telegrams Guy, urging him to tell her what is going on, to come to Mexico, and telling him that she is proud of him for taking on the Palmyra job. Guy responds, not to Anne, but to the Palmyra Club owner, Clarence Brillhart, informing him that he cannot take the commission. Then he calls Anne and tells her that he will fly down to see her. The thought of Anne helps Guy overcome his reflection that it will be a long time before he again lands a job as big as the Palmyra.

Chapter 6 Summary

Bruno is lying apathetically in his El Paso room, unimpressed by either the town or the Grand Canyon, when Guy enters his mind. He regrets that Guy did not knock on his door after their dinner together, and telephones his mother, who tells him a story about how some friends mistook her husband, “the Captain,” for her father.

Chapter 7 Summary

Guy is also in bed, regretfully reading a letter from Palm Beach, and also conversing with his mother. He tears up the letter offering him the Palmyra commission and reads another letter, this one from Bruno. In the letter, Bruno invites Guy to Santa Fe and reflects "I keep thinking of that idea we had for a couple of murders […] I cannot express to you my supremest confidence in the idea" (47). Guy is pleased by the letter. He has nothing to do but await a visit from his relatives. The local paper has printed a column about Guy's work that had "almost made him feel important" (49). Guy tries to write to Bruno but has nothing to say. Instead, he asks his mother whether she wants to go to the movies.

Chapter 8 Summary

Bruno drunkenly calls Guy. He infers that Guy has given up Palmyra on account of Miriam. Bruno tells Guy he need only give him a sign if he "wants anything done" (50). Guy spurns this offer, and Bruno hangs up.

Chapters 4-8 Analysis

The coincidence of a dysfunctional marriage, a murder plot and a train journey echoes an earlier crime novel by Emile Zola. Zola's 1890 novel La Bête Humaine also uses a train as the vehicle for the execution of the perfect murder. Redness in both Bête and Strangers is a symbol for danger and the bestial, even demonic counterpart to civilized society. The red hair of Zola's murderer Roubaud is also a distinguishing feature of a Highsmithian victim, Miriam. A troubled marriage facilitates the murders in both novels, which present the corruption of their respective societies: late-nineteenth-century France and post-World War II America.

In these early chapters, the schism between Guy and Anne, and Guy and his mother, is already apparent. It is also possible to view Miriam and Bruno as symptoms of Guy's repressed dark side. Their draw on him constitutes his tragic flaw: "There was inside him, like a flaw in a jewel, not visible on the surface, a fear and anticipation of failure that he had never been able to mend" (41). In a novel about murder and train travel, it would be odd not to detect some hint of what Freud called the "death drive," or the destructive impulse. This negative impetus is discernable in Guy's interest in failure, of which Miriam is the "symbol": "[…] at times, failure was a possibility that fascinated him" (41). Guy chooses failure over success when he rejects the biggest commission of his career for Miriam.