Pollyanna

The motor car that runs Pollyanna over is driven by an anonymous person and is the first vehicle of its kind mentioned in the novel. Prior to this, all the named characters, such as Miss Polly and Dr. Chilton rely on the more old-fashioned transport of horses and buggies for transport, while Pollyanna’s cross-country journey was covered by railroads. The motor car is thus an incongruous symbol of modernity in old-fashioned, Beldingsville, a place contained from outside influence. The end of 1913, the year of Pollyanna’s publication, was when Henry Ford invented the assembly line that enabled the Model T car to be mass produced, thus making his product more accessible. Prior to this, motor cars were a relatively rare sighting in small towns.

The anonymity of the vehicle, in addition to Pollyanna’s inability to judge its speed as “hurrying home from school” she “crossed the road at an apparently safe distance” before the “swiftly approaching motor car”, highlights the depersonalized, alien nature of the attack (161). It also shows that Pollyanna’s optimism means that she does not give this unfamiliar vehicle an extra margin of caution as she considers whether she can cross the road. Here, a pessimist might have let the car go past before crossing and escaped unscathed.