"The Train" is an early short story by the American author Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...

. It is one of the six stories included in O'Connor's 1947 master's thesis The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories and was published in The Sewanee Review

Sewanee Review

The Sewanee Review is a literary journal established in 1892 and the oldest continuously published periodical of its kind in the United States. It incorporates original fiction and poetry, as well as essays, reviews, and literary criticism...

in 1948. It later appeared in the 1971 collection The Complete Stories

The Complete Stories (O'Connor)

The Complete Stories is a short story collection by Flannery O'Connor. It was published in 1971 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It comprises the stories in A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge, plus several previously unavailable stories.-Contents:*"The Geranium"*"The...

. O'Connor revised this story into the first chapter of her novel, Wise Blood

Wise Blood

Wise Blood is the first novel by American author Flannery O'Connor, published in 1952. The novel was assembled from several disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review...

.

"The Train" describes a young man, Hazel Wickers, as he boards a train home and his interactions with other passengers and an African American employee who he believes to be the son of someone in his hometown. The man denies this.