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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lonesome Dove, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
American Mythology
Family
Luck, Fate, and Chance
The Good Life
The Meaning of Masculinity
Feminine Strength
Summary
Analysis
Augustus rides back to Call’s makeshift cattle camp. The night shift raids Mexico by dark, returning each morning with a few hundred head of cattle. The day shift brands the animals and watches over them. Call works both shifts. Jake tries to get out of both. Allen, Sean, and Newt—all on the branding shift—are becoming capable cowhands. The Irishmen are willing to do the work the more experienced cowhands consider beneath their dignity, and their singing soothes the restive animals.
The patterns that became immediately apparent as the crew began to collect animals continue, and again the book calls out Jake as a bad example for his indolence, especially in contrast to Gus, who neither works as hard as Call nor turns his back on all pleasures. Fresh from a visit to Lorena, his relaxed attitude suggests that he’s found the key to a good life in working moderately and enjoying the pleasures he can access where he is.
Themes
Call and Jake, each in his own foul mood, ride back into camp around suppertime. Jake resents the work Call expects him to do and feels stressed by the decisions he must make about Lorena and the drive. As he helps himself to a dish of Bolivar’s intensely spicy beef-and-varmint stew, Call says that they should be able to begin the drive in a few days. Jake says he’s decided to go to San Antonio instead.
True to form, when Jake gets back from one day of work—the only full one he’s put in since he ran back to Texas from Arkansas—he tries to quit the drive. And, incidentally, he also tries to get out of the commitment he made to Lorena—he promised her San Francisco, not San Antonio. He’s not the man he wants Lorena to think he is.
Themes
When Call walks off to get his supper, Augustus turns to Jake and warns him that Lorena is getting restless. San Antonio is the opposite direction she wants to go in. It’s a better idea, he suggests, to take her on the drive—Call’s opinions about women be dammed—at least as far as Denver. If they like it there, they could stay. Jake stands up and says he’s going into town. When Call comes back with his plate, Augustus announces that if they want to keep Jake, they’ll have to take Lorena along, too. Call writes this off as another of Augustus’s jokes.
Here Gus acts as the protector Lorena hoped Jake would be—and he shows that he has more insight into Lorena than Jake, primarily because he’s interested in her as a person, not just as a beautiful sex object. And he shows his own cleverness by manipulating Jake into helping achieve his—and Lorena’s—goal of making sure that Lorena isn’t left behind.
Themes
