Union Station – Chapter 73 Summary and Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The chapter opens with an unnamed woman bending her neck and resting her forehead on the edge of a table as she imagines the advent of a man returning from war. She visualizes him at dusk in a station, his face haggard under station lights, with a nearby coast and crying gulls. He swings aboard a train, hoists his duffel bag, and slumps into a seat. Too tired to eat, he tears apart a sandwich he has bought.
Beside him sits an elderly woman knitting a red sweater. She tells him about her children and grandchildren, but he cannot bear to hear stories of children because he has seen too many dead ones—children with sleepy eyes, waxy hands, and blood-soaked rag dolls. He turns away and gazes at his own hollow-eyed reflection in the dark window. He stands between cars, smokes, tosses the butt, and urinates into the void, sensing himself slipping into nothingness. He returns to his seat, experiencing alternating chills and sweats, as in love. Eventually he sleeps, mouth open, head against dirty glass, hearing the ticking of knitting needles and the clacking of train wheels.
The woman then imagines him dreaming of her as she dreams of him. They fly toward each other through a wet-slate sky on dark invisible wings, drawn by hope and longing but baffled by fear. In their dreams they touch and intertwine like a collision, then fall to earth like fouled parachutists or botched angels, enemy groundfire rising to meet them.
A day and a night pass. At a stop he buys an apple, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, and a newspaper. He wishes he had brought alcohol for oblivion. He looks out at rain-blurred fields and clumps of trees, his eyes crossing with drowsiness. Evening brings a lingering sunset wilting from pink to violet. Night falls with fitfulness, starts and stops, the iron screams of the train. Behind his eyes are reds of small hoarded fires and explosions.
He wakes as the sky lightens and sees water on one side—a flat, shoreless silver lake. On the other side are small discouraged houses with laundry drooping on lines. Then factories with smokestacks and blank windows. She imagines him descending into early morning, walking through the station’s long vaulted hall lined with pillars, across the marble floor. Echoes of blurred loudspeaker voices float. The air smells of smoke—cigarettes, trains, the city itself.
She too walks through this dust or smoke, poised to open her arms and be lifted into the air. Joy clutches her throat, indistinguishable from panic. Dawn sun comes through tall arched windows, igniting the smoky air and making the floor glimmer. He comes into focus at the far end, each detail distinct yet tremulous like a reflection on shivering water. But her mind cannot hold him; she cannot fix the memory of his face. A breeze seems to blow over the water, dispersing him into broken colours and ripples, then he reforms elsewhere, taking on his familiar body. Around him is a shimmering—the shimmering of his absence, which appears to her as light. It is the simple daily light by which everything around her is illuminated: every morning and night, every glove and shoe, every chair and plate.
Key Events
- The woman imagines the man’s journey home by train after war, his exhaustion and trauma.
- He is haunted by memories of dead children; he reflects on his own sense of dissolution.
- The elderly woman knitter tries to engage him, but he avoids stories of family.
- The woman envisions their shared dreams: they fly toward each other but fall, colliding.
- During the journey, the man buys food, wishes for alcohol, and endures physical discomfort.
- He wakes to see the inland lake and industrial outskirts of the city.
- The woman imagines his arrival at Union Station, where she waits.
- She struggles to hold his image in her mind; his absence appears as shimmering light.
Character Development
The Woman (unnamed narrator of the embedded story): The chapter reveals her intense, almost desperate longing for the man’s return. Her imagination is both creative and anxious; she cannot fully fix his image, suggesting a fear of losing him or that the reunion will not match her hopes. Her use of imagination as a coping mechanism shows her deep emotional investment.
The Man (returning soldier, likely Alex Thomas): The portrait of him is shaped entirely by her imagination, yet it reveals war trauma: the nightmares of dead children, the physical toll, the desire for oblivion. He is detached from civilian life, as shown by his rejection of the elderly woman’s stories. His journey is one of physical and mental exhaustion, with a sense of drifting toward nothingness.
The Elderly Woman (knitter): A minor but symbolic figure. Her knitting (red, the colour of blood or passion) and her attempts to share family stories contrast with the man’s trauma, highlighting the gap between wartime experience and ordinary life.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
Imagination vs. Reality: The entire chapter is an act of imagination by the woman, who conjures the man’s journey. Yet she admits she cannot hold his memory; his image dissolves and reforms. Her imagination is powerful but fragile, blurring the line between what she creates and what is real.
War Trauma and Its Lingering Effects: The man’s flashbacks to dead children, his hollow-eyed reflection, and his sense of falling into nothingness convey the psychological damage of war. The red of the knitting echoes the red of explosions and blood behind his eyes.
Love as Collision: The shared dream depicts love as “more like a collision” and “enemy groundfire.” Love is not gentle but violent and dangerous, intertwined with fear and loss. The metaphor of fouled parachutists and cindery angels suggests an imperfect, wounded union.
Absence and Light: The shimmering around the man is “his absence” but appears to the woman as light. This paradox highlights how absence shapes her perception; his presence is so longed for that his absence fills her world with a luminous, painful quality. The final image of everyday objects illuminated by this light suggests that her entire life is suffused with his absence.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 73 is a lyrical and psychologically dense passage that encapsulates the emotional core of the embedded novel within The Blind Assassin. It explores the tension between hope and trauma, the power of imagination to bridge physical distance, and the fundamental anxiety of reunion. The chapter also exemplifies Atwood’s use of a woman’s perspective to construct a male character’s interiority, blurring the boundaries between narrator and subject. The imagery of light and shimmering recurs throughout the novel, making this a key moment for understanding the theme of memory and the impossibility of fully possessing another person.
Study Questions and Answers
1. Why does the woman imagine the man’s journey in such meticulous detail? What does this reveal about her state of mind?
She imagines his journey to feel closer to him and to exert some control over the uncertainty of his return. The detail reflects her obsessive love and her anxiety; she cannot bear the unknown, so she fills it with vivid scenes. The fact that she fails to hold his image reveals her underlying fear that he may not truly come back, or that the reunion will not match her fantasy.
2. What is the significance of the elderly woman knitting a red sweater on the train?
The red colour connects to the blood and explosions in the man’s war memories, while the act of knitting—creating something domestic and orderly—contrasts with the chaos he has experienced. The elderly woman’s attempts to share family stories highlight the chasm between his traumatic past and the ordinary world. She represents a normality he can no longer access.
3. How does the chapter use light and shimmering to convey the theme of absence?
The man’s absence is described as a “shimmering” that appears to the woman as light. This light illuminates her daily objects—gloves, shoes, chairs—suggesting that his absence has become the fundamental condition of her existence. It is not a void but a pervasive presence. The shimmering also makes the man’s image tremulous, indicating that memory and reality blur, and that her love is lived in a state of uncertainty.