I was in a darkened hotel room, snuggled down amongst the sleeping forms of my family when I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train for the very first time. I was a little girl but a big fan of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley. I don’t remember where we were or why we were in a hotel room but I vividly remember being absorbed by the sinister winking of poor Miriam’s thick lenses as her black-and-white murder was reflected back at me.
Years later, I would be just as taken with the opening of Highsmith’s novel of the same name:
The train tore along with an angry, irregular rhythm. It was having to stop at smaller and more frequent stations, where it would wait impatiently for a moment, then attack the prairie again. But progress was imperceptible. The prairie only undulated, like a vast, pink-tan blanket being casually shaken. The faster the train went, the more buoyant and taunting the undulations.
In the next paragraph, the reader meets Guy. Guy, a famous tennis player, is sitting staring out of the window of the train mulling over how he is going to get out of his marriage to Miriam, the unfaithful wife he now despises. However, we do not need to reach Guy before sensing his intense anger and frustration.
Instead, Highsmith uses her description of the landscape to create this tension ahead of time. The train is “angry," and it stops “impatiently” at each small station. What is more, the train is characterised as if it is doing battle with the prairie. Highsmith describes the train's progress as an “attack," detailing how it “tore” through the landscape. Her use of the language of violence foreshadows the brutal murder that is to take place later in the story.
We are also given a sense of how Guy views his wife by the way he views the prairie. Miriam is described as “pink and tan-freckled, and radiating a kind of unhealthful heat” while the prairie is “pink-tan” and “taunting”. Notice, too, the almost lusty way the landscape “undulated." To Guy, both the landscape and Miriam are frustrating obstacles he has to overcome. Throughout this passage, Highsmith perfectly evokes the misogyny that drives Guy’s particular hatred for his wife.
This tense, dangerous atmosphere is created before we meet Guy or Miriam, and it is in this atmosphere that our psychopathic stranger will arrive and propose his bloody scheme.
Creative Writing Exercise:
In this task, you will get the chance to experiment with using landscape to create a particular atmosphere.
Make two lists. One should be a list of specific landscapes you want to include in your story, and the other a list of feelings you would like to evoke in the course of your writing.
For instance:
A snowy field
A hot, metropolitan city
A river in the rain
Autumn in a forest
Boredom
Excitement
Depression
Nausea
2. Use your two lists to experiment with different pairings of landscape and emotions.
For instance:
A hot, metropolitan city - Nausea
A snowy field - Depression
A river in the rain - Excitement
Autumn in a forest - Boredom
3. You will likely find one pair feels like it ‘fits’ better than the others. For instance, I think a hot, metropolitan city evokes the idea of nausea fairly well. Now, put a character in your chosen setting and try to evoke the feeling you chose simply through the character's view of the landscape. You can do this in the first or third person.
This is a good exercise to use if your character has no scene partner to emote to or if you are trying to write more subtle emotional moments.
Notes:
You can get an indie bookshop copy of Strangers on a Train here.
You can find out where to watch the movie here.