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Watty Piper’s Mechanical Dystopia: Looking Back At “The Little Engine That Could”

Watty Piper’s Mechanical Dystopia: Looking Back At “The Little Engine That Could”

Last updated on: July 11, 2017 at 8:45 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Watty Piper’s Mechanical Dystopia: Looking Back At “The Little Engine That Could” 2017-07-11T20:45:04-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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Next comes a big strong engine. The toys repeat their plea, but the strong engine is having none of it. You see, he’s a freight engine– but not just any freight. He’s a freight engine who exclusively pulls printing presses that “print books and newspapers for grown-ups to read.” So in Watty Piper’s fantastical version of the Great Depression, only good children get to eat, read or own weapons; and trains operate in a strict caste system wherein they can’t pull the wrong kind of freight even to prevent a collision. I think I prefer The Handmaid’s Tale.

The dolls and toys are becoming despondent, but the clown isn’t. He flags down a dingy old engine, and the toys chorus at him again. If I were a real academic and not a blogger, I would write a paper on the Greek Chanting Chorus motif exemplified by the chorus of dolls and toys in Watty Piper, but I’m not.

The dingy engine doesn’t have a snooty excuse not to help the train; it’s just that he’s too tired.

Now, the toys are really upset. And still, no one thinks about running back to the roundhouse for the breakdown crane.

Fortunately, along comes a tiny and female blue engine. I’m not sure what Watty Piper was trying to convey by having the original engine and the blue engine be the only characters referred to by the female pronoun. Maybe they’re just maternal and helpful. Maybe they’re the only engines who doesn’t fear that their masculinity is threatened by associating with that clown.

The toys chorus their plea for help before the good little children starve to death, for the love of Pete. They’re probably roasting and eating the very worst of the bad children at this point.

The engine protests that she’s not big enough, she’s not an engine designed to pull a train, she just switches cars at the station.

The toys keep right on pleading.

The train spares a thought for those wretched children, and couples herself to the front of the train. In order to do that, she would have had to have been ahead of the train the whole time, but this mystery is never explained.

“I think I can,” says the little blue engine. “I think I can. I think I can.” It’s a charming idea, but self-confidence is actually irrelevant if the confident being in question is a machine specifically designed to be only big enough to switch cars. But this is a children’s story. In a children’s story, compassion and a high self-esteem are all it takes. The train pulls the dolls, toys and insipid rations all the way over the mountain without breaking a sweat.

“Hurrah, hurrah,” cried the gay little clown and all the dolls and toys. “The good little boys and girls in the city will be happy because you helped us, kind, little blue engine.”

The engine chugs away, muttering “I thought I could” and leaving us with a thousand unanswered questions. There ought to be an epilogue like in 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale, assuring us that the era of sentient driverless trains and mountaineers punishing naughty children with starvation was eventually confined to history, but there’s not.

Still, the whole thing isn’t nearly as sadistic as The Brave Little Toaster.

The Little Engine That Could

toy

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