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Christina Baker Kline's Orphan Train

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Orphan Train a novel by Christina Baker Kline is a beautiful story about a seventeen year old girl named Molly Ayer who has lived in a foster home since she was nine and a ninety-one year old lady named Vivian who accepts Molly into her home and shares her life story with her for a school project.This story shows the hardship, friendship, and loneliness about the two girls that connect with each other.But the story behind the book goes back to the year 1854 when over 200,000 orphans were sent on a train to provide free labor which is the actual meaning of the orphan train.Because the author based the story of an orphan story the audience has been interested because of the connection between the book and the event of the real orphan train, …show more content…

During the years of the Orphan Trains the theme of it was depressing because of all the stuff they were going through. For example, the adults would inspect the orphans to check if they were sturdy enough to work on the fields. Then Baker Kline put this theme in the story in a sense towards the flashback, that Vivian told Molly about the her harsh story of her life. Eva Schegulla stated from her research“As train riders and their descendants, stood up and told their stories, it was clear that even the ones that ended happy were poignant, filled with loss.”In the story Molly was filled with loss when she was kicked out of her foster home until Vivian took her into her household. Also clarified by Eva Schegulla,in the real event “children were not allowed to take anything with them on the train so they had to smuggle little keep sakes with them” and is also seen in the story in a different manner when Molly got kicked out she had a few of her stuff with her symbolizing towards the event (214). The author did amazing putting the theme to a point where the audience can relate the book to the event because it is similar, the theme builds up all of the events going on till the climax of the …show more content…

The event that started the setting was when “Molly was caught stealing a copy of Jane Eyre from the library, to keep the peace with her foster parents, she ends up cleaning out elderly Vivian's attic”(213) stated by Beth Vesel. But Molly later found out that Vivian herself was an orphan after cleaning her attic. The real Orphan Train had a lot of emotion because of the setting the orphans were in at the time, for the audience it had a sort of sentimental value because of the connection they made to the struggles in the book and the real event that occurred. Both women in the story struggled to find a home and the orphans on the Orphan Train also had trouble finding a home. The struggles in the story and the have similarities because of the setting that was implied due to the events that were going on. Christina Baker Kline did a great job by comparing the similarities to catch the audience's attention and make them feel the type of setting represented, and they way Baker Kline implied the similarities in the book is because of the research, the interviews, and reading about the

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