The Far and the Near

The Far and the Near Summary | Detailed Summary

The story takes place in the United States in the 1930s on the outskirts of a small town located along the railroad tracks. The engineer of an express train sees a small tidy house from his high seat in the cab as the train passes. The engineer has been riding the same route for twenty years and always looks forward to seeing this house each time he travels this route between two cities.

The house is white with neat green blinds. It is bordered with flowerbeds and has an arbor with grapes that ripen each August. He can see a neatly laid-out vegetable garden and three large oak trees in front that shelter the house from the summer heat. The engineer is able to get a good view of the house and its occupants because his train slows as it approaches the town and just begins to pick up speed and resume its normal rhythm as it passes the house.

For twenty years, the train passed the house every day at the same time, and the engineer blew the whistle for a woman and a little girl who came out onto the back porch and waved to him. Over the years, the engineer has watched as the girl grew from a child to a woman, just as his own children grew up and married during the same period. He himself has aged, but he feels that what he has seen and what he experienced on the job humbled him and made him wiser.

Over the years, the engineer has seen the woman, her daughter, and the house in every kind of light and condition, ranging from the gray of winter to the green of spring. He feels a real tenderness toward the house and the women, tenderness similar to what he feels for his own children. He has seen horrible and tragic accidents on the train tracks, but in the midst of any tragedy or tedium, he finds that the view of the little white house and the women waving from the porch always brings him hope and happiness.

He feels that he knows the inhabitants of the house in every way, that he knows every aspect of their lives. The relationship he believes he has with the women in the house becomes the focus of all his hopes for the future.

He promises himself that one day, when he retires from the railroad, he will go to the house and meet its occupants. He will talk to the women who live there and whose lives, from his perspective, have been so entwined with his own.

When that day comes, and he leaves his job of twenty years, the engineer comes down from the train onto the platform of the station in the little town where the women live. He walks through the town and down the road to the house. From this new perspective, everything seems strange and new. He even questions if this can be the same town seen from the tracks everyday from the high train windows. It was as "disquieting as a city in a dream." He becomes more confused and disoriented as he walks through town toward the outskirts where the little white house is located.

When he reaches the house, he knows it is the right place because he recognizes the three sheltering oak trees in front, the flowerbeds, and the grape arbor. He also sees the glint of rails shining on the tracks in the distance beyond the yard. The engineer is surprised to find himself feeling doubtful and hopeless as he goes through the gate toward the porch. He had expected to feel comforted and happy. When he knocks on the door he hears footsteps inside, and then the door opens to reveal the woman of the house standing in front of him.

As soon as he sees her, he is sorry he came. He feels an immediate sense of loss and begins to grieve. Her face is sallow and worn, pinched and harsh. She seems like a mistrustful and suspicious person instead of like the friendly and brave woman he had viewed from the train.

In his attempts to explain why he has come, the engineer sounds terrible and unreal, even to himself. He continues to talk, fighting his feelings of confusion and regret. The happiness and hope he had received from the woman and the house when he saw them from the train disappear, and he feels almost ashamed to have made this visit.

The woman unwillingly allows him to come inside the house and calls to her daughter to join them. Her voice is harsh and shrill. The engineer sits for a while in the woman's ugly parlor and tries to make conversation as the women look at him with "dull hostility" and "sullen, timorous restraint." Finally, he leaves the house and again walks the road back to town.

When he traveled through the area on the train, the land had been familiar to him and made him glad. He felt confident and brave when he rode the rails through the town and picked up speed by the little white house. Now, as he moves on foot through the same area, he feels sick and doubtful. The way had become strange and horrible. He realizes that this world had existed all the time close to the shining tracks. When he traveled the rails, the town and the house had a magical and bright aspect, but now, the "small good universe of hope's desire" he perceived from the train had disappeared forever, and he would never feel the same way again.