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Chapter 22
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
Now that they’re finally leaving, Augustus finds himself flooded with regrets, which he lists to Call while they’re frying bacon for breakfast. When the night shift—Newt, Pea, Dish, and Jasper—rides in, they’ve picked up an additional hand. Soupy Jones is another former Ranger who was particularly good friends with Jake. He retired and married, but his wife has since died, and he’s interested in joining up. Call hires him on the spot. In the light of morning, Bolivar still hasn’t decided if he’s going which causes alarm. If he stays, the company will be left with Gus’s sub-par cooking.
Leaving proves a test of Augustus’s equanimity, and it demonstrates his approach to life: he finds happiness in little things like playing cards at the Dry Bean or baking biscuits. On the trail, it will be harder to find these kinds of joys. But, true to his nature, Call will not be dissuaded. Soupy’s brief backstory offers yet another reminder of the tragic—but not uncommon—difficulties of life on the frontier. Soupy lost one wife; Gus lost two.
Themes
Augustus hitches the mules—Greasy and Kick Boy—to the wagon, planning to ride back into town to retrieve his sign and his sourdough starter. Jasper—who is afraid that he will drown in a river—asks him for jugs, if he can find any, so he can attach them to his horse as floats.
Jasper’s fears become a running theme in the book, pointing to all the many things that can go wrong on a cattle drive. They also reinforce the role luck and fate play in life.
Themes
Half a mile down the path, Augustus comes upon the messy campsite Lorena and Jake set up the night before in the dark. Jake is in a foul mood: he doesn’t like camping because he’s afraid of snakes; he has a nasty—and poisonous—mesquite thorn in his thumb; and Lorie refused to have sex with him the night before. She is trying to cook breakfast over an insufficient fire. It’s easy for Augustus to see that she has the kind of determination that Jake lacks, and he’s confident she’ll make her way to San Francisco in the end.
When Jake and Lorena rode up to join the cattle drive the night before, their behavior gave a pretty clear indication of how the trip was going to proceed from there: Jake would selfishly ignore Lorena, while Gus would come to the rescue. Now, it seems that Gus won’t always have to take care of things. Lorena, as Gus can clearly see, has reserves of grit and ingenuity that will see her through on her own.
Themes
In town, Augustus pries his sign off the Hat Creek corral, but he ends up leaving his disintegrating sourdough pot. Then he stops in the Dry Bean for one last drink. A disheveled and despondent Xavier sits in the corner. He confesses his feelings for Lorena to Augustus, who listens sympathetically, unwilling to make fun of the suffering of a mature man in the way he might tease a boy like Dish. Xavier makes him promise to tell Lorie that his offer still stands if something happens to Jake, but Augustus knows Xavier’s suit is hopeless.
Gus faces his loss with equanimity in the end, and the fact that he takes the sign suggests that the relationships he has with his friends are, ultimately, more important than anything else, as they are what gives his life meaning. Xavier understands this, too, but he’s made a grave error in allowing his feelings for Lorena to become so overwhelming. Gus likes Lorie, but he keeps things light—a necessary stance when life is so unpredictable.
Themes
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When Augustus gets back to the waiting wagon, he finds Lippy Jones inside it with a packed bag at his feet. He insists on joining the group. With the Hat Creek boys and Lorena gone, there won’t be any customers at the Dry Bean for him to play piano for. Tears fill his eyes as he looks at Lonesome Dove for the final time, although he brushes them away, observing how strange a feeling it gives him to be leaving without knowing when—or if—he will return.
Readers get a final sense of how small and isolated—and thus ephemeral—Lonesome Dove truly is if the departure of the Hat Creek men and a few teenaged boys from the surrounding farmsteads will make that much of a difference. Lippy’s tearful goodbye recognizes the fact that the drive is long and difficult and not everyone will survive.
Themes
