52 pages • 1 hour read
Michael CrichtonThe Great Train Robbery
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1975A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: The Great Gold Robbery
The events in The Great Train Robbery are a fictionalized account of a historic gold heist known as the Great Gold Robbery that took place on May 15, 1855, in London. Many of the details of this robbery are consistent with the novelized version in The Great Train Robbery, although the names have been slightly changed. For instance, the mastermind of the real plot was William Pierce, whose name has been changed to Edward Pierce in the book, and the real safe cracker was Edward Agar, whose name is Richard Agar in the text. Many of the details of the plot are consistent as well; the historical Agar did indeed make wax casts of the keys he used to open the safes while they were en route to Folkestone, and the team did swap out the gold for lead shot. The trial was also just as much of a media circus as Crichton depicts it to be. However, there are key differences as well. In real life, the gold was unloaded at Dover, not thrown off the train between London and Folkestone. Also, unlike the fictional Edward Pierce, William Pierce served two years of hard labor for his crimes and did not escape.
Although Michael Crichton claims to rely on “voluminous courtroom testimony” and “journalistic accounts of the day” to construct his narrative in The Great Train Robbery (18), this is simply a literary device to give the account a veneer of verisimilitude. There are other fictional sources included in the narrative as well, such as the memoir of Mr. Harranby, Days on the Force, from which Crichton claims to quote extensively (167). However, no such person or text exists. While all of Crichton’s novels include intense research and consummate attention to detail, the author’s historical fiction novels often employ similar literary devices, and these facetious references to false yet believable “sources” are designed create the impression that the story he is telling is true in its entirety. He also employs this technique in novels such as Timeline (1999) and Eaters of the Dead (1976).
Historical Context: The Crimean War
The target of the heist was a shipment of gold that was sent from England to France to pay for troops as part of the two countries’ alliance against the Russian Empire during the Crimean War. The Crimean War, which lasted from October 1853 to February 1856, was fought over Russia’s attempted expansion into territory controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Although the British and French empires had historically been enemies, they allied with the Ottoman Empire to oppose Russia’s advance. Early in the war, when the events of The Great Train Robbery take place, British troops suffered major losses in battles such as the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade, led by Lord Cardigan and memorialized in the poem by the same name, which was written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1854. In the context of Crichton’s novel, this conflict routinely pulls press focus away from the sensational heist and the subsequent trial.
The historical tensions between France and Britain date back hundreds of years and led to difficulties in the investigation into the heist. These tensions were particularly fresh in the mid-19th century following the Napoleonic Wars. As Crichton notes in the novel, a British military commander named Lord Raglan still “referred to the enemy as ‘the French,’ although the French were now his allies” (85). Pierce, the mastermind of the heist plot, expects that mistrust between these two nations will lead each to blame the other for the theft, which is indeed what happens. Likewise, the British bankers have a low opinion of the French and “assum[e] that the filthy Frogs [a derogatory term for French people] had misplaced the bullion, and were now trying to fix the blame for their own stupidity on the English” (240). Thus, the novel employs numerous references to historical events, and even the primary plot points are built upon Crichton’s extrapolations of the likely reasoning behind Pierce’s actions.
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By Michael Crichton
