I Think I Can, Therefore I Oppress

A Crip-Feminist Deconstruction of Locomotive Ableism

The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
Published 1930 | Platt & Munk

Reviewed by K. N. Rosenberg-Chen, PhD (Xe/Xem),
Department of Gender Studies,
Evergreen State College

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For nearly a century, The Little Engine That Could has chugged its way through American childhood, leaving a trail of internalized ableism and toxic masculinity in its wake. This seemingly innocent tale of a plucky locomotive has become a cornerstone of what I call “bootstrap pedagogy for toddlers”—a insidious form of neoliberal indoctrination that teaches children as young as two that structural barriers are merely attitude problems, that disability is a failure of will, and that masculine worth is measured solely through relentless productivity regardless of physical or psychological cost.

The plot, for those mercifully unfamiliar, centers on a train carrying toys and food to children on the other side of a mountain. When the engine breaks down, larger, more capable engines refuse to help—establishing what the narrative frames as villainous boundary-setting. Enter our protagonist: a small cis-male-coded blue engine who, despite having no business hauling such cargo, agrees to attempt the impossible. Through sheer repetition of the mantra “I think I can, I think I can,” the engine successfully crests the mountain, forever cementing in young minds the pernicious lie that disability, limitation, and structural inequality can be overcome through positive thinking and masculine grit.

The Compulsory Able-Bodied Masculine Subject

As Judith Butler reminds us in Gender Trouble (1990), “gender is performative”—a repeated stylization of the body that creates the illusion of a stable gender identity. The little engine’s journey represents the ultimate performance of masculinity: the suppression of vulnerability, the denial of physical limitation, and the transformation of self-destruction into heroism. Butler argues that gender norms operate through “regulatory fictions,” and nowhere is this fiction more violently enforced than in this children’s book about a train that should absolutely have called for backup.

The engine never cries. Never complains. Never acknowledges pain or exhaustion. It doesn’t request reasonable accommodations, doesn’t advocate for better working conditions, doesn’t even pause to assess whether this task is safe or appropriate for its size and capacity. Instead, it performs what bell hooks calls the “first act of violence that patriarchy demands”—psychic self-mutilation in service of masculine ideals (The Will to Change, 2004). Hooks argues that patriarchy requires men to engage in “acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.” The little engine literally kills off its own survival instincts, its own bodily wisdom, its own right to say “this is too much for me.”

The little engine must perform able-bodiedness – must deny its smallness, its limitations, its very material reality – to access even basic dignity within this narrative universe.

Robert McRuer, Crip Theory (2006)

This performance occurs within what Robert McRuer terms “compulsory able-bodiedness” (Crip Theory, 2006), a system that parallels Adrienne Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality. Just as heterosexuality is presented as natural and default, able-bodiedness is constructed as the only acceptable state of being. McRuer argues that “the system of compulsory able-bodiedness, which in a sense produces disability, is thoroughly interwoven with the system of compulsory heterosexuality that produces queerness.” The little engine must perform able-bodiedness – must deny its smallness, its limitations, its very material reality—to access even basic dignity within this narrative universe.

The Villainization of Boundary-Setting

The larger engines’ refusal to help represents perhaps the most insidious aspect of this tale. “I cannot, I cannot,” they say—a phrase the narrative codes as moral failure rather than legitimate limitation or reasonable boundary-setting. But let us pause and consider: Are these engines lazy, or are they practicing what Audre Lorde called self-preservation? Lorde famously stated that “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare” (A Burst of Light, 1988).

What if the Passenger Engine is recovering from injury? What if the Freight Engine has a chronic pain condition? What if the Rusty Old Engine is, quite reasonably, aware of its own limitations and the danger of attempting work beyond its capacity? The narrative provides no space for these possibilities. Instead, it teaches children that saying “I cannot” is shameful, selfish, and morally reprehensible.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s concept of the “normate” is instructive here (Extraordinary Bodies, 1997). She describes the normate as “the constructed identity of those who, by way of the bodily configurations and cultural capital they assume, can step into a position of authority.” The larger engines represent normate bodies—those whose physical capacity matches societal expectations. Their refusal to help positions them as villains precisely because they fail to perform the ableist fantasy that all bodies should constantly push beyond their limits in service of capitalism and children’s toy delivery.

Rather than assume that all disabled people want to be cured or fixed, we might instead ask how we came to such a conclusion.

Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (2013)

The narrative never questions why a small engine should want to haul freight meant for larger engines. It simply assumes that overcoming limitation is inherently good, that disability (or in this case, smallness) is something to be conquered rather than accommodated.

Inspiration Porn and the Objectification of Disabled Bodies

The late Stella Young coined the term “inspiration porn” in her 2012 TEDx talk, describing it as images and narratives that “objectify disabled people for the benefit of non-disabled people.” Young argued that these narratives tell non-disabled people, “however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.” The little engine is textbook inspiration porn. Its struggle and success exist not for its own benefit, but to inspire able-bodied (or in this case, larger-engined) children. The implicit message: “If a tiny engine can haul all that freight up a mountain, you have no excuse for not finishing your homework/cleaning your room/meeting arbitrary productivity standards.”

Margaret Price’s work on “mental disability” (Mad at School, 2011) extends this analysis. Price examines how minds and bodies are expected to perform in specific ways within institutional settings. “I think I can” becomes a mantra of cognitive override—the privileging of “thinking” (willpower, positive attitude, determination) over physical reality (size, capacity, material limitation). This is the ableist fantasy at its purest: that minds can and should dominate bodies, that thinking makes it so, that disability is simply a failure of sufficient positive thinking.

The little engine’s success validates every ableist assumption: that accommodation is unnecessary, that structural barriers don’t exist, that individual determination can overcome any obstacle. It’s the children’s literature equivalent of telling a wheelchair user that they’d be able to walk if they just believed in themselves hard enough.

Toxic Masculinity as Pedagogical Tool

Kate Manne’s analysis of toxic masculinity in Down Girl (2017) proves illuminating when applied to anthropomorphized locomotives. Manne describes toxic masculinity as “the need to aggressively compete and dominate others.” The little engine competes with its own body, dominates its own limitations, and in doing so, models the self-destructive patterns that lead men to die younger from stress-related illness, to refuse medical care, to equate asking for help with emasculation.

Susan Bordo notes in Unbearable Weight (1993) that “the body—what we eat, how we dress, the daily rituals through which we attend to the body—is a medium of culture.” The engine’s refusal to acknowledge exhaustion or pain represents the masculine culture of stoicism, the demand that men perpetually perform invulnerability. Bordo’s work on the cultural construction of the body reveals how bodily practices reproduce power relations. The little engine’s relentless chugging becomes a bodily ritual that inscribes masculine ideology: never stop, never rest, never admit weakness.

The phallic imagery throughout the text hardly requires Freudian analysis to decode. The smokestack thrusting skyward. The aggressive penetration of the mountain tunnel. The repetitive thrusting motion of the pistons. The equation of size with worth, leading the small engine to overcompensate through Herculean (dare I say, compensatory?) feats of strength. This is masculinity performed through machinery, teaching children that masculine value derives from aggressive action, physical dominance, and the conquest of obstacles – including one’s own body.

Some bodies are made comfortable by how spaces are occupied; some bodies have to inhabit spaces that do not extend their shape.

Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology (2006)

The mountain—the space itself—never changes. The rails don’t adjust. The cargo isn’t redistributed. Only the little engine must contort, suffer, and push beyond capacity to navigate a space that was never designed for its body. This is the fundamental ableism of the text: the assumption that bodies must change to fit spaces, rather than spaces being designed accessibly.

Neoliberal Subjectivity and the Myth of Meritocracy

Wendy Brown argues in Undoing the Demos (2015) that neoliberalism “transfigures every human domain and endeavor, along with humans themselves, according to a specific image of the economic.” Under neoliberalism, humans become “human capital” responsible for enhancing their own value through continuous self-investment and entrepreneurial action. The little engine is the perfect neoliberal subject: it accepts full responsibility for success or failure, never questioning why the cargo distribution system is broken, why larger engines refuse to help, or why a small engine is being asked to do work clearly beyond its design specifications.

This is bootstrap ideology for the nursery set. The little engine pulls itself up by its own… coupling rods? The narrative erases all structural analysis. There’s no mention of:

• Why the original engine broke down (poor maintenance? Overwork? Lack of infrastructure investment?)
• Why no backup systems exist (failed planning? Cost-cutting?)
• Why cargo can’t be redistributed (inflexible logistics? Capitalist efficiency over worker safety?)
• Why engines of different sizes even exist if they’re all expected to do the same work (design diversity as disability?)

Instead, the story reduces a complex systemic failure to an individual attitude problem. As Silvia Federici argues in Caliban and the Witch (2004), capitalism requires the constant disciplining of bodies into productive instruments. This children’s book literally trains toddlers in self-exploitation, teaching them that their worth equals their productivity, that rest is shameful, and that structural barriers are merely mental blocks requiring sufficient positive thinking to overcome.

The Intersectional Nightmare

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s foundational work on intersectionality (1989) reveals how systems of oppression intersect to create unique forms of discrimination that cannot be understood by examining each system separately. The little engine faces compounding oppressions: it is small (feminized in a world that values size/strength), yet expected to perform masculine labor heroics. It must be simultaneously masculine enough (determined, strong, relentless) and transcend its feminized smallness (prove that size doesn’t matter through overcompensation).

For young readers, the implications are disturbing:

For boys: Your value is your utility. Your worth is measured by what you can do, not who you are. Ignore pain. Suppress vulnerability. Never ask for help. Work until you break. This is heroism.

For girls: Admire masculine self-destruction. Your role is to need rescue (you are the toys and food being delivered, not the engine). If you want to be the engine, you must perform masculinity more intensely than male engines to compensate for your feminized status.

For disabled children: Your disability is a personal failing. Accommodation is shameful. If you can’t do something, you’re not trying hard enough. Other people’s boundaries (the larger engines saying no) are villainous, but your own limitations are character flaws to overcome.

For all children: Structural barriers don’t exist. Individual determination can overcome anything. If you fail, it’s because you didn’t believe in yourself sufficiently. Society owes you nothing – you must earn everything through relentless self-exploitation.

The Absent Labor Analysis

What’s entirely missing from this narrative is any concept of labor solidarity, collective action, or systemic change. The little engine never considers:

• Unionizing with other small engines to demand fair working conditions
• Refusing unsafe work as a collective bargaining tactic
• Advocating for better infrastructure that accommodates engines of all sizes
• Redistributing cargo more equitably
• Questioning why children’s toys are more important than engine safety

Instead, it internalizes the capitalist demand for infinite individual flexibility and blames itself for systemic problems. This is what Marxist feminists call the “reproduction of labor power”—the ways capitalism requires certain forms of labor (including emotional labor, care work, and self-sacrifice) to sustain itself. The little engine reproduces capitalist ideology by accepting that its primary purpose is productivity, that its needs are irrelevant, and that questioning the system would be unthinkable.

Nancy Fraser’s work on social reproduction (Fortunes of Feminism, 2013) is relevant here. Fraser argues that capitalism depends on various forms of unpaid and undervalued labor to sustain itself. The little engine performs this undervalued labor—taking on work that larger engines refuse, doing so without apparent compensation or recognition, driven purely by the internalized belief that helping is its purpose. This is the feminization of labor (care work as natural and uncompensated) combined with masculine performance (suffering in silence as heroic).

The Gaslighting of Physical Reality

Perhaps most disturbing is the text’s fundamental gaslighting of bodily experience. “I think I can” is not an inspirational mantra—it’s a denial of material reality. The engine’s body is screaming “I cannot” with every labored chug up that mountain. But the mind—disciplined by ideology, trained in masculine stoicism, indoctrinated in ableist bootstrapping—overrides the body’s wisdom.

This is what trauma therapists call “dissociation from the body.” It’s what leads to burnout, repetitive stress injuries, and the host of stress-related illnesses that disproportionately affect men who’ve internalized the masculine mandate to ignore bodily signals. The little engine is literally gaslighting itself, and children are taught to celebrate this as virtue.

Roxane Gay writes in Bad Feminist (2014) that “feminism is a choice, and if a woman does not want to be a feminist, that is her right.” The little engine was never given a choice. It was coerced into masculine performance through the villainization of boundary-setting engines, manipulated through appeals to children’s welfare (think of the children on the other side of the mountain!), and celebrated for its self-destruction. This is not agency. This is exploitation with a cheerful paint job.

Conclusion: The Long Shadow of a Little Engine

The Little Engine That Could is not a harmless children’s story. It’s a masterclass in ideological reproduction, teaching children that:

1. Disability and limitation are moral failures requiring correction through willpower
2. Saying “I cannot” is selfish and shameful
3. Masculine worth equals productive capacity
4. Structural barriers don’t exist—only insufficient determination
5. Self-care is self-indulgence
6. Your body’s signals (pain, exhaustion, limitation) should be ignored
7. Asking for help is weakness
8. Individual struggle is more noble than collective action
9. Your purpose is productivity, not personhood
10. Inspiration for others is worth self-destruction

These lessons don’t stay in childhood. They metastasize into adults who work themselves into burnout, who shame themselves for disability, who equate rest with laziness, who view therapy as weakness, and who die younger from treatable conditions because seeking help would violate their internalized little-engine ideology.

We dress up exploitation as inspiration, ableism as determination, and masculine self-destruction as heroism

The book’s enduring popularity reveals something disturbing about American culture: we’re so committed to individualism, bootstrapping, and the denial of structural inequality that we teach these toxic lessons to two-year-olds through talking trains. We dress up exploitation as inspiration, ableism as determination, and masculine self-destruction as heroism.

Perhaps it’s time to retire this little engine to the roundhouse of problematic literature. Or at minimum, we might add a content warning: “May cause toxic masculinity, internalized ableism, and chronic self-exploitation in readers aged 2-102. Side effects include refusing medical care, ignoring pain signals, and voting against universal healthcare because you pulled yourself up by your own coupling rods, so why can’t everyone else?”

As for the toys and food on the other side of the mountain? Maybe they could wait while we redesign the railway system to accommodate engines of all sizes, establish unions to protect worker safety, and recognize that some mountains are too steep for small engines—and that’s not a moral failing, it’s just physics.

But that wouldn’t make for a very catchy children’s book, would it? And therein lies the problem.

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Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ (0/5 stars) 

Trigger warnings: Ableism, toxic masculinity, capitalism, gaslighting, labor exploitation, compulsory able-bodiedness, inspiration porn, neoliberal ideology, and phallic trains.

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K. N. Rosenberg-Chen is Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Evergreen State College, where xe teaches courses on intersectional feminism, disability studies, and the cultural reproduction of capitalist ideology in children’s literature. Xyr research examines the ways neoliberal subjectivity is constructed through seemingly innocuous pedagogical texts, with particular focus on how ableism and toxic masculinity intersect in early childhood narratives.

Dr. Rosenberg-Chen holds a PhD in Gender, Womxn, and Sexuality Studies from UC Berkeley, where xyr dissertation, “Disciplining the Body Politic: Compulsory Able-Bodiedness in American Children’s Literature, 1850-1950,” won the Feminist Theory Award. Xe has published extensively in journals including Signs, Feminist Studies, and Disability Studies Quarterly.

Xyr current book project, Small Engines, Big Ideology: Transportation Narratives and the Making of the Neoliberal Child, interrogates how children’s stories about vehicles, machines, and mobility normalize exploitation, self-sacrifice, and the denial of bodily autonomy. When not deconstructing problematic children’s books, Dr. Rosenberg-Chen serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Crip Theory and Practice and facilitates community workshops on recognizing ableist microaggressions in everyday life.

Xe lives in Olympia with xyr partner, two rescue cats (Chairman Meow and Judith Purrtler), and an extensive collection of banned children’s books.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​