40 pages • 1 hour read
Gertrude WarnerThe Boxcar Children
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1924A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Bakery
A bakery opens the story as the four children search for shelter and something to eat. They purchase loaves of bread and convince the baker’s wife to let them sleep on the store’s benches, but they overhear that the wife wants to capture them for servants and get rid of Benny. The bakery represents the false warmth and comfort of a world that will take advantage of them just because they’re small and weak. It’s their first lesson in independence: If they want to be safe, they must find their own safe place.
Boxcar
Searching for shelter during a downpour, Jessie finds an abandoned railroad boxcar deep in the woods. The kids furnish it with things they find at a nearby trash dump, and they turn it into a home. In its shelter, the four orphans discover they can take care of themselves.
When they unite with their grandfather and move into his large house, they miss the boxcar. He has the car brought to his backyard, where the kids can use it as a clubhouse. To the orphans, the boxcar represents family, safety, and a gathering place. It’s the symbolic center of their universe and continues that role during their further adventures in later books.
Brook
The boxcar stands next to a small stream or brook. The children quickly make use of its many benefits: It provides water for washing, a waterfall that refrigerates milk, and moisture to wet a compress to heal a wound, such as the thorn that pierces Watch’s paw. The kids also build a dam on the brook to make a pool for swimming. The brook represents the resources around the children that they can use to improve their orphaned lives. It teaches them a lot about being inventive and self-reliant.
Kettle
Jessie, Violet, and Benny find kitchen things at the trash dump and a kettle that serves many purposes. Jessie makes it into a tub for washing dishes, a pot to boil water, a tureen for soup, and a centerpiece that the children gather around as they eat meals. Jessie figures out how to string up the kettle so it can heat up properly over the fireplace. With its many uses, the kettle symbolizes the Boxcar Children’s inventive resourcefulness.
