The Yellow Arrow Literary Elements

Allegory/Science Fiction

On the train ‘The Yellow Arrow’, specific time and place not stated

Third person limited narration, from Andrei’s point of view.

Lethargic, grim, detached, dreamlike

The protagonist of the story is Andrei, a passenger who realizes the grim fate of the train he’s riding on. There is no personified antagonist, but the Yellow Arrow itself could be considered the antagonist of the story, as it causes all the main conflict and negativity in the story.

The major conflict in The Yellow Arrow is an ongoing one; it’s Andrei’s realization that he is stuck on the train, and his desire to leave it without dying. However, he is unsure of how to do this, and his longing is shunned as idle philosophy by his friends. At the end of the novel, this conflict can be interpreted as solved, as Andrei does indeed leave the train, but it is left ambiguous as to whether he is dead or not.

The climax of the novel is near the very end, after Andrei reads Khan’s note and subsequently leaves the train, either dying or somehow escaping. At this point, the prose becomes less and less collected, hectic and frantic. This gives a sense of great suspense, and gives insight into Andrei’s frenzied emotion.

On Page 8: “Maybe I seem just like one of those yellow arrows falling on the tablecloth to someone,” he mused to himself, “and life is nothing but the dirty window that I’m flying through: and here I am falling, falling for God knows how many years already on the table, right there in front of the plate, while someone looks at the menu and waits for breakfast…” This foreshadows Andrei’s later realization that he’s traveling towards his ultimate demise on the train, fittingly named the Yellow Arrow.

Page 90: “Something was wrong. Something had happened while he was asleep.” This is a definite understatement, as the entire train has stopped moving, which is huge; the moving of the train is something that is constant in the entire novel.

There is a pop culture reference on Page 5: “In the last five years, he thought, [his face] had simply gone out of style, along with flared trousers, transcendental meditation and Fleetwood Mac.” Pelevin is well-known for his incorporation of pop culture allusions in literary work, and these references help us as readers relate to the characters, as they are making references that we understand.

Page 85: “There was a long deserted platform ‒ Andrei spotted an old set of false teeth lying in solitary isolation on the flat concrete. Close by was a pole bearing an empty steel rectangle, which had once held a board with the name of the station. A wall made of several concrete slabs flashed by, with a tall heap of rusty iron lattices towering up behind it, then everything was hidden once again behind a dense living wall of trees.” This vivid description of the familiar things Andrei has never paid attention to emphasizes his leaving of the train, and how everything has suddenly become much less dull.

Andrei’s goal to escape the train without dying is a paradox in itself, which is why so many of his friends believe he is just being stupid. Since the outside of the train represents death, and Andrei wants to escape the train to prevent death, there is no way that his goal can be achieved, ultimately creating a paradox.

The situation in The Yellow Arrow is directly parallel with the real world, as the entire story acts as an allegory to display deeper meanings in a subtle way. The riding of the train represents the progression of life, his friends becoming more interested in the ‘Blue Car’ company represents the degrading of relationships throughout life, and Andrei’s philosophy about the train represents the philosophy of life. These concepts, used cleverly as metaphors, are all parallel to situations in life.

While it is also a metaphor, the people in life being called ‘passengers on the train’ is a synecdoche for them being people living life.

Page 85: “Several brick houses stood beside the road, their windows gaping black holes and their shutters wide open.” This personification helps us to understand Andrei’s shock at seeing a house, as he wouldn’t have seen many up close before, always being on the train.