Marcia’s answer to “Does anyone like that the author wrote the railroad as a physical, operating one? I felt it unnece…” > Likes and Comments

I agree, at first it was jarring, the 'railroad', but if the author had tried to explain the actual movement of real people through a real place [thinking of Huck and Tom and Joe here] we would have become interested in the logistics and particulars. The railroad metaphor is a way for the author to say, 'don't worry about how they got from one place to another, focus on what happens to them in their starting places, and in the places they stop on their journey, that's what this book is about'. And I think the metaphor opens the door to all that other stuff that's been said about it, by other commentators here, much of it very accurate.