52 pages • 1 hour read
Michael CrichtonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“What was really so shocking about The Great Train Robbery was that it suggested, to the sober thinker, that the elimination of crime might not be an inevitable consequence of forward-marching progress. Crime could no longer be likened to the Plague, which had disappeared with changing social conditions to become a dimly remembered threat of the past. Crime was something else, and criminal behavior would not simply fade away.”
In this statement from the novel’s introduction, Michael Crichton describes his theory of what makes the Great Train Robbery (which is based on the historical Great Gold Robbery) so shocking to Victorian society. They believe that crime can be eradicated just as disease was, through the application of new technologies and understandings. The audacious heist challenges this concept of crime, implying that such feats will be characteristic of a rapidly changing society.
“Edward Pierce, on the other hand, was positively exuberant in his approach to crime. Whatever his sources of income, whatever the truth of his background, one thing is certain: he was a master cracksman, or burglar, who over the years had accumulated sufficient capital to finance large-scale criminal operations, thus becoming what was called a ‘putter-up.’ And toward the middle of 1854, he was already well into an elaborate plan to pull the greatest theft of his career, The Great Train Robbery.”
In this quote, Crichton contrasts Pierce and his actions with the dominant concepts of the crimes that “educated figures” committed in Victorian England. Historically, such criminals were low-level conmen, but Pierce proves to be an educated man who runs a large criminal enterprise and uses his talents to gain extreme wealth.
“He smiled broadly. ‘So, gentlemen, you see that the crude attempt of a mere child from the dangerous classes can hardly be of concern to Huddleston & Bradford, for the little ruffian had no more chance of stealing that bullion than I have of—well, of flying to the moon.’”
In this quote, Mr. Henry Fowler boasts about the security measures he has put in place to protect the gold shipment from London to France. He believes that criminals—which is to say, poor, uneducated people—are too unsophisticated to successfully steal the gold. The irony of this statement is that he is revealing his security measures to the very man who will successfully steal the gold.
“The proximity of great riches and profound squalor also impressed foreign observers, particularly since the slums, or rookeries, were refuges and breeding places for ‘the criminal class.’ There were sections of London where a thief might rob a mansion and literally cross a street to disappear into a tangled maze of alleyways and dilapidated buildings crammed with humanity and so dangerous that even an armed policeman did not dare pursue the culprit.”
In Victorian England, poverty was closely associated with crime, giving rise to the phrase “the criminal class,” which was considered to be roughly analogous to the lower class. These Misconceptions About the Nature of Crime historically led the Victorians to overlook the crimes committed by the educated upper classes. Within the context of the novel, although rich and poor people live in close proximity to one another in rapidly industrializing London and people across society commit crimes, only the poor neighborhoods are seen as “breeding places for the ‘criminal class.’”
“No one among the crowd of more than twenty thousand paid the slightest attention when the well-dressed party of hangers-on departed Mrs. Molloy’s boarding house—with one woman of their party so faint that she had to be carried by the men, who hustled her into a waiting cab—and rattled off into the morning light. A faint woman was a common enough sight and, in any case, nothing to compare to a woman turning slowly at the end of the rope, back and forth, back and forth.”
Pierce cleverly relies on distractions to pursue his cons and schemes. In this case, he counts on the crowds being distracted by the public hanging of a murderer and successfully rushes Clean Willy—who is dressed as a woman—into a cab. The narrative describes what an outside observer might see, relying upon the mere suggestion to put forth the connection between the dress mentioned earlier and Clean Willy’s current injuries. Crichton puts these details together in such a way as to indicate that the “woman of their party” is Clean Willy in disguise.
“Elizabeth Trent tittered, and replied that he was a bold rogue to flatter her so openly. ‘One might even suspect an ulterior motive,’ she said, laughing. ‘Heavens, no,’ Pierce said, and to further reassure her he placed his hand lightly, and briefly, over hers. ‘I am so happy,’ she said. ‘And I am happy with you,’ Pierce said, and this was true, for he now knew the location of all four keys.”
This exchange between Elizabeth Trent and Pierce demonstrates how adept Pierce is as a confidence man, and the third-person omniscient narration allows Crichton to relate the full meaning of the encounter. Pierce uses his charm and persistence to convince Elizabeth that he is genuinely courting her, when in fact he is simply using her to learn where her father keeps the key to the safe.
“By nine o’clock on the evening of November 12, 1854, Pierce had his confederates in their places. The crow, Agar’s woman, lounged across the street from the Trent mansion. Barlow, the stall, had slipped down the alley toward the tradesmen’s entrance and the dog pens at the back of the house. Pierce and Agar were concealed in shrubbery right next to the front door. When all was in readiness, an elegant closed carriage drew up to the curb in front of the house, and the bell was rung.”
This quote demonstrates the complexity and sophistication of Pierce’s schemes, which require multiple actors to work in concert and complete tasks at exactly the right moment. This quote also features some of the criminal slang commonly used by Pierce and other criminals, such as “crow” for lookout and “stall” for someone “who distracts the attention of the victim (“Stall.” Green’s Dictionary of Slang).
“When His Lordship requested an explanation, Agar said with an expression of surprise that he had just explained it as best he could. It required several minutes of interrogation to make it clear that Agar meant that Pierce had pretended to be a ‘flimp or dub buzzer’—that is, a snatch-pickpocket or a low-grade thief, or a ‘mutcher,’ a man who rolled drunks—in order to deceive the skipper, so that the skipper would not comprehend that a good criminal plan was being worked out. […] This was one of several instances in which incomprehensible criminal slang halted courtroom proceedings.”
This passage demonstrates that Cockney criminal slang is so dense and obscure that even contemporary speakers of standard Victorian English find it incomprehensible. The full array of Cockney slang used in Agar’s speech to the court also showcases Crichton’s detailed research into his chosen topic. In order to invoke a believable version of Victorian England, Crichton pays consummate attention to a wide range of details.
“Pierce saw Agar exit, behind schedule by five full seconds. His face was flushed with exertion.
‘Fifty-seven…fifty-eight…’
Agar sprinted down the stairs, three at a time.
‘Fifty-nine…sixty…sixty-one…’
Agar streaked across the station to his hiding place.
‘Sixty-two…sixty-three…’
Agar was hidden.”
As this passage demonstrates, The Great Train Robbery is at times written in the style of a fast-paced thriller, and Crichton uses sharp, quick dialogue and urgent wording to create a sense of moment-to-moment suspense that becomes nearly cinematic in intensity. This quote demonstrates how Michael Crichton generates tension by quoting Clean Willy counting down the seconds that Agar has left to leave the train manager’s office and hide.
“‘I need a new lay,’ he said and stared at the ceiling. ‘A proper flash lay for the miltonians to discover.’ He watched the cigar smoke curl upward, and frowned.”
In this quote, Pierce is shown thinking up a new distraction to throw the police off his trail, and he uses Cockney slang to describe his thinking, invoking the “lower-class” atmosphere that pervades his team of criminals. A “lay” is a crime; “flash” means “ostentatious,” and “miltonians” are policemen. Because these terms are used repeatedly throughout the novel, it is possible to discern their definitions by context clues alone, but Crichton also provides direct translations when necessary.
“Victorians also witnessed another rivalry, centering around a new social institution—the organized police force. Almost immediately, the new force began to form relationships with its avowed enemy, the criminal class. These relationships were much debated in the nineteenth century, and they continue to be debated to the present day. The similarity in methods of police and criminals, as well as the fact that many policemen were former criminals—and the reverse—were features not overlooked by thinkers of the day.”
Crichton is highly critical of law enforcement as an institution in The Great Train Robbery. In this quote, he proposes the cynical view that the police need crime in order to justify their very existence. Furthermore, he suggests that there is not much of a difference between police and the criminals they pursue, and his unflattering depictions of Harranby and Jonathan Sharp also reinforce this point.
“In the late afternoon of May 17th, Harranby had a conversation with his assistant, Mr. Jonathan Sharp. Mr. Harranby reconstructed the conversation in his memoirs, Days on the Force, published in 1879. The conversation must be taken with some reservations, for in that volume Harranby was attempting to explain why he did—not succeed in thwarting Pierce’s robbery plans before they were carried out.”
Crichton commonly creates references to fictional documents to inject a sense of verisimilitude into his novels. One such fictional text is Harranby’s memoir, “Days on the Force.” Crichton uses his discussion of this text to criticize the incompetent Harranby as someone who is hoping to restore his reputation by providing excuses for his failures.
“Then, as now, white-collar crime involved the largest sums of money, was the least likely to be detected, and was punished most leniently if the participants were ever apprehended. […] It was a matter of definition: a person who was not from the criminal class could not be committing a crime. Persons of a better station were merely ‘breaking the law.’”
In this passage, Crichton discusses the Misconceptions About the Nature of Crime in Victorian England, explaining the widespread yet overly simplistic belief that only those of lower social classes commit crimes. As the story unfolds, Pierce and his team mercilessly exploit this misconception to gain access to higher social strata and pursue their criminal activities with greater ease.
“The exposed flesh at the face and hands was bloated and puffed, a repellent gray-green color. The lips were black, and so was the partially protruding tongue. The dispatcher and his nephew hardly saw more of that horrific spectacle before the feverish girl, with a final scream of heart-wrenching agony, swooned on the spot. The nephew instantly leapt to attend her, and the dispatcher, with no less alacrity, closed the lid and began shutting the latches with considerably more haste than he had displayed in opening them.”
As this passage demonstrates, Pierce is gifted at developing distractions. In this case, he disguises Agar as a corpse, and the scene implies that Miriam—whose expert ability in makeup has been noted elsewhere—has used her skills to make Agar look so grotesque that a mere glimpse of him will cause a wild commotion. Crichton’s action-oriented and colorful language in this quote also speaks to his facility at crafting moment-to-moment descriptions that would be easy to translate from the page to the silver screen.
“The truth is that Bernoulli’s Law would not operate in any way on his body. He would simply be a man exposed to a fifty-mile-an-hour blast of rushing air, which could blow him off the train at any moment, and it was absurd for him to attempt what he did at all. Nor was this the extent of his misinformation. The very fact was that high-speed travel was so new left Pierce, along with his contemporaries, with very little sense of the consequences of being thrown from a fast-moving vehicle.”
Pierce uses The Development of New Technologies to plan and execute his heist. However, this passage demonstrates that the high-speed railway is such a new technology that even Pierce does not fully understand its capacities and dangers.
“Altogether, he tried more than a dozen keys, and he was beginning to despair that any would turn the trick when he heard the scream of the whistle. Looking forward, he saw the Cuckseys tunnel, and an instant later he was plunged into blackness and churning sound.”
This quote is an example of how Crichton generates tension and suspense when describing the heist. In this scene, Pierce is hanging off the side of the railway car, using mountain climbing equipment and trying desperately to find the right lockpick to open the padlock on the luggage car. His sudden “plung[e] into blackness” is designed to heighten the tension even further and create a split-second “cliff-hanger” to raise the question of whether he will be able to succeed in his efforts.
“Thus, at about 8:15 a.m. on May 23rd, it was discovered that the strongboxes contained a large quantity of lead shot, sewn into individual cloth packets, and no gold at all.
This astounding development was immediately reported to London by telegraph, and the message reached Huddleston & Bradford’s Westminster offices shortly after 10 a.m. Immediately, it provoked the most profound consternation in that firm’s brief but respectable history, and the furor did not abate for months to come.”
In this quote, Crichton describes the reaction of the bankers of Huddleston & Bradford when they learn that the gold has been removed from the safe and replaced with lead shot. They are understandably shocked, especially because of their previous conviction, demonstrated by Mr. Henry Fowler earlier in the text, that criminals are too uneducated to pull off such a heist.
“Theories about the lost gold shipment ran the gamut from the most mundane—a couple of French or English hooligans stumbling upon a fortuitous opportunity—to the most grandiose—an elaborate plot by the highest officials of the French or English government, engaged in a Machiavellian scheme intended simultaneously to line their own pockets and to sour relations with their military allies. Lord Cardigan himself, the great war hero, expressed the opinion that ‘it must surely be a clever combination of avarice and statecraft.’”
Pierce exploits the existing tensions between the British and the French, using the resulting uncertainty after the heist to impede the investigation. As this quote shows, this approach is initially effective. This quote also shows how quickly the heist becomes a focus of media coverage, as even “the great war hero” Lord Cardigan feels compelled to comment on it.
“On the night of November 13th, the forces of the Yard surrounded the mansion of Edward Pierce, or John Simms, and entered it with barkers at the ready. But the owner was not at home; the frightened servants explained that he had left town to attend the P. R. spectacle the following day in Manchester.”
After Agar informs on Pierce, the authorities raid Pierce’s home. This quote describing the raid uses some criminal slang that is commonly employed by the co-conspirators. A “barker” is a gun, and a P.R. spectacle is a “prize ring show,” or boxing match. Once again, these liberal sprinklings of Cockney slang throughout the text create a more realistic tone that evokes the spirit of the Victorian era.
“The trial of the three train robbers was greeted by the public with the same sensational interest it had earlier shown in the crime itself. The prosecuting officials, mindful of the attention it focused upon the event, took care to heighten the drama inherent in the proceedings.”
Relying on his knowledge of the Great Gold Robbery, Crichton creates a realistic depiction of the fact that even the original trial was treated like a spectacle, just as the crime itself was sensationalized by the press. He suggests in this quote that the authorities of the time were complicit in making the trial a show rather than a sober execution of the law.
“Lord Palmerston announced that the Indian rebels had acted as ‘demons sallying forth from the lowest depths of hell.’ At such a moment, the appearance of a criminal in the dock of Old Bailey, for a crime committed two years past, was of very minor interest.”
Throughout The Great Train Robbery, Crichton places the heist in the context of the events and society of Victorian England. During the trial, there is an uprising in India against British colonialism, and the nation is more captivated by this “Trial of an Empire” than by the trial of a few British thieves.
“Even more astounding than Mr. Pierce’s words was his general demeanor, for ‘he carried himself extremely well, and proudly, and gave no hint of contrition, nor any trace of moral remorse for his black deeds.’ Quite the opposite, he seemed to demonstrate an enthusiasm for his own cleverness as he recounted the various steps in the plan.”
Crichton portrays Pierce as an antihero who shows no remorse for his crimes. Thus, the Victorian public admires Pierce for his intelligence even as they condemn him for his actions. The descriptions of Pierce also emphasize the audacity of his amoral nature, especially within the context of a culture that so highly and publicly prizes morality as a virtue.
“‘I have killed no one,’ Pierce replied, ‘but had I killed five hundred Englishmen through my own rank stupidity I should be hanged immediately.’
This exchange was not widely reported in the newspapers, out of fear that Lord Cardigan would sue for libel. But there was another factor: Pierce was, by his testimony, hammering at the foundations of a social structure already perceived as under attack from many fronts. In short order, the master criminal ceased to be fascinating to anyone.”
Pierce’s actions pose a threat to the whole moral edifice of Victorian society by challenging the common belief that crimes are committed by the uneducated poor. Lord Cardigan was responsible for the deaths of many British troops in the famous “Charge of the Light Brigade,” and Pierce’s harsh criticism of his actions further emphasizes the challenge to authority that he represents. As a result of the danger he poses to the established moral order, the papers reduce their coverage of the trial.
“‘Sir,’ said the judge, ‘it is a recognized truth of jurisprudence that laws are created by men, and that civilized men, in a tradition of more than two millennia, agree to abide by these laws for the common good of society. For it is only by the rule of law that any civilization holds itself above the promiscuous squalor of barbarism. This we know from all the history of the human race, and this we pass on in our educational processes to all our citizens.
Now, on the matter of motivation, sir, I ask you: why did you conceive, plan, and execute this dastardly and shocking crime?’
Pierce shrugged. ‘I wanted the money,’ he said.”
This quote contrasts the pomposity and formality of the British establishment (as represented by the judge) with the straightforward honesty of Pierce when he is questioned about his motivations. Pierce’s directness about his motive is designed to create a humorous tone when it is contrasted with the overly elaborate language used by the judge.
“Pierce, Barlow, and the mysterious Miss Miriam were never heard from again. In 1862, it was reported they were living in Paris. In 1868, they were said to be residing in ‘splendid circumstances’ in New York. Neither report has ever been confirmed. The money from The Great Train Robbery was never recovered.”
Crichton gives Pierce and his co-conspirators Barlow and Miriam a more heroic ending than the historical Pierce and his compatriots ever experienced. While the real-life Pierce served time for his crimes, his fictional counterpart escapes with his compatriots and with the gold and is implied to go on to live a glamorous life.
By Michael Crichton