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Chapter 1
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
As is his custom, Call walks down to the Rio Grande and sits on a little bluff for a while in the dark and quiet night, listening carefully. He doesn’t want to lose the skills and attention he so carefully honed when he was a Texas Ranger; although there is very little threat from Indigenous nations anymore, it’s still possible to run into danger. Mostly, he likes his solitary hour because it releases him from the burden of being the leader. Although it’s been years since he had real troops, everyone still looks to him as the Captain, and he can’t relinquish the role, even if he’s just captain of the chores now.
The first chapter introduced readers to Gus. Now the book gives the reader a feel for Call’s temperament and character. He’s disciplined to a fault—he insists on honing instincts and skills that he no longer needs. Readers get the sense that he’s bored without an adversary to fight, that peace has left him discontent. And although he clearly resents his leadership role to some extent, it’s equally clear that he can’t let it go, either. Call isn’t at peace with his life or with himself.
Themes
Back at the house, Augustus, Pea Eye, Newt, Bolivar, and the pigs enjoy the cool evening on the porch. Bolivar sharpens his knife while Augustus makes comments laden with sexual innuendo about Bolivar’s wife and daughters. Although he doesn’t understand most of it, Newt fears and resents the argument. He fears it because he doesn’t trust the old men not to come to blows after they’ve been drinking. And he resents it because it interrupts his lovesick daydreams about Lorena Wood, Lonesome Dove’s resident sex worker. Newt has been in love with her since she arrived several months earlier, and although he knows that there’s something unsavory about how she makes a living, he assumes she does it out of necessity, just like he’s a horse wrangler more by chance than choice.
Newt’s worry over the potential for violence reminds readers how omnipresent it was in late 19th-century frontier life. And it makes him seem very young. So does his lovesick mooning over Lorena despite never having spoken to her. Lorena’s occupation makes her vulnerable to judgment in an era that strongly condemned sexual freedom. Yet, Newt thinks of her as a person first and foremost, alerting readers that this book will not condemn sex workers for their occupation or make generalizations about them.
Themes
Newt asks Augustus what the Captain does when he leaves each night. Augustus replies that Call likes some peace and quiet while the rest of them sit around and yap. He adds that Call keeps “playin’ Indian fighter” because he likes to “out-suffer everybody” and he struggles to let down his guard even though it’s been years since anyone has seen an Indigenous person in the area. Call returns a while later, after Bolivar and Pea Eye have gone to bed. The Captain quickly orders Newt to bed, too. He discusses the idea of rustling some livestock out of Mexico and driving it north to buyers, but this sounds like too much work to Augustus. Standing up and stretching, he ambles off toward the Dry Bean Saloon to join a card game and while away some time with Lorena.
Gus’s characterization of Call—that he can’t drop his Ranger persona and that he gets a perverse pleasure out of suffering on others’ behalf—matches the way the book described the Captain at the beginning of this chapter. When Call returns, he orders Newt to bed, which sounds more like something a father than a captain would do. And the chapter ends with Gus making yet another claim for the value of life’s pleasures in the form of beautiful women and diverting entertainments—things Call doesn’t seem to have an interest in.
Themes
