The Far And The Near Analysis

When reading or watching any form of literature we expect for there to be a happy ending. Mainly because we may sometimes use literature to fill the voids in our lives. In the short story “The Far and the Near” by Thomas Wolfe an old train engineer, who has seen deaths, has no family, and has performed a solitary and lifeless job for his entire life fills his void by awaiting two o’clock every day so he can blow his whistle and wave to a mother and daughter. No matter how much a person has done in his life, for himself or others, we know a happy ending is not guaranteed. We are accustomed to always seeing the protagonist, who goes through hardship, rewarded with what he was striving for. Under all of the things the narrator uses to make us …show more content…
Throughout the story the narrator made it seem as if there had to be a happy ending, mainly due to how the engineer was portrayed. Certain events in the story give away the ending and show that the engineers fate was indeed predictable. The story starts off describing the house that the engineer passed everyday. It was on the outskirts of a town and it is described as, “an air of tidiness, thrift, and modest comfort.” Also, later in the passage he sees the house up close for the first time and knows it is the one based off of the “lordly oaks, flower beds, garden, and arbor”. This has all the making of a very pleasant home and makes the reader think that the people inside will be just as lovely to the engineer as their house was to his eyes; however, this view is what the engineer sees while he is driving by. From the train the engineer thought the mother and daughter gave him a sense of family, therefore, he could be completely wrong about how the house looks. The vivid, complimentary detail of the house is merely a tactic to make the reader look over the fact that the engineer thinks everything about the mother and daughter is wonderful, to a