Hélène
Hélène is one of the story’s two important characters. She is first described through the eyes of the other, a young Russian national, who immediately fingers her as a foreigner. Tall, dressed in jeans, she carries a backpack slung over her shoulder.
It is soon revealed that Hélène is French, middle-aged, a heavy smoker, and speaks no Russian. Her thoughts reveal a decidedly French existentialist bent toward philosophy, but she is also a quiet observer who makes no immediate judgments about anybody. Despite the glaring language barrier, these elements make her an ideal accomplice for the other main character.
Hélène had come to Russia to be with her lover but in the wake of that relationship deteriorating, she boards the Trans-Siberian Express as a full-fledged escape hatch right out of her adopted but still quite foreign country. Although presented throughout most of the narrative as someone who takes her time to make a decision, both her reasons for coming to and leaving Russia and her willingness to help a stranger reveal that impulsivity is also a significant attribute of her self-identity.
Aliocha
Aliocha is the only other character in the story who is developed beyond the necessities of plot. He is a twenty-year-old Russian recently conscripted into the Russian military who has no desire whatever to sacrifice his life for politicians and generals living far away from danger. It is his decision to try to escape from being discovered and sent to his station in Siberia that forms the crux of his odd relationship with Hélène.
Just as she does not speak Russian, so Aliocha not speak French. Besides not seeing himself as a military hero, he is also trying to escape his unfortunate position for more personal reasons. He has been the victim of bullying and beatings by his fellow soldiers.
Hélène’s desire to stay aboard the train for the full trip across the vast country is juxtaposed against Aliocha’s fervent desire to escape from the train. The train is not his vessel for escape, but rather a moving prison in which every move he makes carries the possibility of discovery and detection unless he can find a comrade willing to become an accomplice. As such, whereas Hélène has time and temperament for contemplation, Aliocha is living in the moment, always intensely aware that he may be just one small move or decision away from his nightmare of being sent to a remote outpost far away from friends and forced to deal with the ramifications of attempted desertion.
