Web design and content by the 8th-grade students of Bernard Zell
A student's guide to the novel inspired by hidden history.
Radio
Chapter Summary
Chapter nine of Train shows us new things about the characters and setting. At the beginning of the chapter, Tsura realizes that Marko likes men. Throughout chapter nine the setting is mostly centered at the Rosenstrasse Protest. Elise, Ruth and Mrs. Broden are outside the Jewish Community center alongside the other women and men whose spouses are inside. Meanwhile, Tsura arranges for Wolf to make false identification papers for Alexander and Kizzy. While at Seraph's apartment the next day Marko and Tsura hide the papers in a loaf of bread, which they place in a basket full of food, hoping that Ruth will be able to get inside and give Alex the papers. Tsura and Marko then go to join the protest. Tsura sees Elise's Hitler youth uniform she assumes Elise is a Nazi. There they give Ruth the basket and describe to her the plan. Inside the Rossentrasse center,r Alex is with his father who has fallen very ill. When Ruth is able to get into the center she finds Alex, gives him the basket of food and gives him a clue about the papers. When Ruth comes back out of the center Elise hallucinates and sees Victor and starts to feel jealous of Ruth because she knows that Ruth’s brother is okay, Elsie then walks into a cafe to get refreshments and meets a Nazi soldier, Dieter, who persuaded her to tell him who she is, who she is with, and what ethnicity they are. Later that night, Elise goes through her father’s desk and finds a paper with the real cause of her brother's death: “suffocation by gas.” The next day Marko confesses to Tsura that he left Duerr with Kizzy and made her take her to the hospital by herself. Later that day Marko dressed in his stolen Nazi uniform tries to get into the center. But when Dieter recognizes him from a previous night when he caught Marko and Alex kissing he chases Marko into an alley and gets him to give up Alex’s name. Then a fight occurs and Marko cuts Deiter's hand and runs away.
Chapter Analysis
Chapter Nine explores the idea of false hope. False hope is a sense of things starting to go the way you want them too, when really they are not. The first example of this occurs when Tsura and Marko put the false identification papers in the bread. “So how’re we gonna get the papers inside?” Tsura raised her eyebrows and twisted her mouth sideways, waiting for Marko to figure it out. ‘’Ruti,” Marko said, smiling”(278). They start to believe that everything will work out when really they do not know that Kizzy’s not located in the same building. They begin to joke in this dire situation because they believe that things will going to be ok and they are wrongly hopeful. Ruth and Alex start to develop false hope when Ruth goes into the center where he is being kept to give him false papers and they see each other. “Alex held his breath, suppressing a joyful scream. Ruti is here!”(288). They start to believe that everything will work out and that Alex, Mr. Broden, and Kizzy will be able to escape the Nazi’s. Alex is happy to the point where he wants to scream when he sees his sister because it fills him with hope. Elsie also develops false hope. “Elsie didn't want Diter to go. They're looking for someone,”(296). Talking to Dieter, who reminds her of her brother, gives her hope. She is so hopeful she willingly gives him information about her and her friends. She doesn't realize it, but the hope that she has developed is a false hope, and will come back to bite her. The calm before the storm. These are all examples of occurrences in the chapter radio where characters experienced false hope. These are all very important occurrences too because it makes the reader believe that everything will be tied up in a nice bow, when really that doesn't happen. There is no closure in Train or in the Holocaust. All hope that occurs is false hope because nothing they hope for will happen.
There is a lot of character change and development in this chapter. For example Tsura is having a very conflicting time dealing with this new information about her brother. She says, “Marko likes men” (273). She now knows he is gay and later in this chapter finds out that Marko left Kizzy alone to take the professor to the hospital. Looking at Marko is hard for her because she is now looking at her brother in a whole new light. Also finding out this information about what Marco did to Kizzy and because this resulted in Kizzy being taken away she is very angry because of the outcome and because her brother lied. Elise changes in this chapter from being kind of sympathetic to Ruth, but then when she finds out that Victor dies because of the Nazi’s she’s not sympathetic to Ruth at all. She says, “ Those Jews and Jew lovers get what they deserve” (301) This illustrates that she is no longer sympathetic to Ruth and is almost happy that her brother is imprisoned. She feels as though Ruth is being a bad friend and everyone should lose a loved one just because she did. She is also very conflicted knowing that what she is being taught in Girls League League about how Hitler is amazing and loves his people, which contradicts what he did to her little brother she doesn't know what to think anymore.