The Girl on the Train Guilt and Blame

Because Rachel feels guilty for everything she's done (or thinks she's done) she believes that everyone else can read it on her, as if she has "guilty drunk" tattooed on her forehead. Acting this way probably does make people look at her differently, which only reinforces the terrible way she thinks of herself.

What follows this sentence are a few horrible situations, written as though they're hypothetical, but we learn throughout the book that all of them are terrible things Rachel actually did, and she still feels guilty about them. She's guilty because she let her drunk personality take over and do things she wouldn't normally do.

Megan planned to travel the world with her brother but she never did, and then her brother died. She's always felt guilty about that, calling him "the big hole in [her] life" (2.31).

It's hard to feel guilty when you don't even know what you did. So Rachel compensates by just feeling terrible about everything.

Megan feels guilty about her past actions (like accidentally killing her baby—oops) and would only be made to feel worse by her snooping, jealous husband if she wrote about her past. But not having an outlet just makes things worse for her.

Stop right there, Rachel. Tom pretty much <em>is </em>the start of most of her guilt and misery, as we'll find out later. She should blame him for almost everything.

Rachel fears she may have done something to Megan—something she doesn't remember—because Tom conditioned her to feel this way. Tom would take advantage of Rachel's blackouts, and even though he was the one abusing her, he would convince her that she abused him, making her feel guilty and scared of her blackouts for the wrong reasons.

This is a terrible feeling, but Rachel learns that she can trust her feelings. These shameful feeling make her feel guilty, and rightfully so. But when she realizes that sometimes she feels fear instead of guilt, she uses that to piece together her fragmented memories.

Tom actually makes a good point here (for once), telling Rachel, "I'm sure it's not just about you" (15.85). But he's also kind of wrong. If Rachel remembered Tom getting into the car with Megan, which she doesn't recall until the very end, she could have told the police and none of this would have happened.

Yikes. Scott definitely feels badly about this because Megan is dead and there's nothing he can do can to go back and change his final words to his wife.