Virgina Moreno's Case

IN AN INSTANT, TO THE DEATH TRAIN: The relationship between the Persona, Addressee, and Dramatic Situation in “Via Tigerland”

In Virgina Moreno’s Via Tigerland, the persona of this poem is quite literally, the opposite of what humans strive to achieve, death. Death, like an “adult” has experienced each and every type of person there is to encounter. Death, in the poem, is a train conductor. He is a man who has experienced many things and many types of people, an adult. In the poem, the train conductor speaks to one person only, a commuter of the train; he is the symbol for the masses of ignorant people. The train commuter is the addressee, who symbolizes people tying to search for our “true selves.” Yet in the process of searching for their “true selves,” the people forget to take care of themselves in favor of their “goal.” We, the readers, are merely bystanders to the conversation between the train conductor and the train commuter. But at the same time, we, the readers, are also the able to connect to the persona and the addressee, as the poem is written in a first person dialogue. The main theme of this poem is the how the inevitability and suddenness of death can come at any point in our lives and that we should not merely exist to finish our goals, we should live to experience them.

In the poem, there is no specific description of the persona. One can only infer from the text that he is, indeed, an adult and is working as a train conductor. As supported by stanza one, line one: “Your passport, Man.” The tone of the persona signifies a sense of finality. “Yes, Deliver there safely your Body.” A sense of finality, of indifference, that is and can be compared to Death. The train commuter, on the other hand, conducts himself with a sense of impatience and urgency. He responds to the persona’s questions quickly and precisely, leaving no room for small talk. As can be seen in stanza one to five, he only replies in short sentences, such as “Poet. Sometimes clown,” “Last station after this.,” and “Last station after this.” The commuter, the “Man,” simply has no time for idle chat with the conductor; he HAS an objective to finish that is above and beyond the importance of the conductor. In this poem, the “Man” has no time to spare, which is contrasted subtly to death, which is and always has been free from the ravages of time. Death can be the total opposite to what a man is, which is life. But it can also be quite similar to “Man” in the poem. In the poem, Death and “Man” are simply doing their jobs, man is living and death is killing.

The train commuter is just a big symbolism of man’s desire to find himself within himself. This “Man” does not experience life, he simply shelves it away, in order to find a solution to a problem he or she had solved long ago. A person doing this cannot live his life properly;