To read "The Dube Train" is to hear Can Themba’s voice—a sophisticated blend of standard English, township slang, and jazz-inflected rhythm. He writes in long, breathless sentences that mimic the lurching of the train itself.
Consider his description of the crowd: "The human sea heaves, surges, and subsides. Hands clutch at straps, at shoulders, at anything. A baby wails its protest against the world, and a toothless old man mutters curses at the generations."
Themba was a teacher before he was a journalist, and his vocabulary is precise, but he never loses the vernacular flair. He uses hyperbole masterfully. When describing the heat of a packed carriage, he writes that it is "hotter than the hinges of Hades." He anthropomorphizes the train, calling it a "reluctant dragon" that belches smoke and groans under the weight of history. Dube Train Short Story By Can Themba
Why does the "Dube Train short story by Can Themba" resonate seventy years later? Because Themba used the setting as a perfect literary device.
The tension reaches its breaking point when the tsotsis physically throw the man off the moving train. To read "The Dube Train" is to hear
In a terrifying moment of clarity, the man realises he is going to die. He is no longer a "man in a brown suit"; he is just a body flying through the air. However, Themba injects a twist of dark fate. The man survives the fall, tumbling into the grass by the tracks.
Lying there, battered and humiliated, he comes to a profound realisation. He realises that his obsession with "dignity" and the suit almost cost him his life. He sheds his respectability and embraces his survival. Hands clutch at straps, at shoulders, at anything
Reading "The Dube Train" is like listening to a saxophone solo. Themba utilizes: