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Chapter 37
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
When they set out, Joe is excited and curious. July barely answers his questions. He’s worried about leaving Elmira behind, and in his anxiety to get this awful job done as quickly as possible, he puts in long days on the trail, barely stopping to water the horses or to eat. Joe isn’t a very strong little boy, so the trip is hard on him, but he doesn’t complain. After a few days, they reach the Red River, near the Texas border. It’s there that they run into a man named Sedgwick. They help Sedgwick unstick his pack mule, which has become bogged in the muddy flats alongside the river. Sedgwick says he used to study bugs, but he’s grown tired of it and now plans to head to Texas as an itinerant preacher. He offers to take Joe with him, but July declines, thinking Sedgewick a little crazy.
Lest readers forget, like Roscoe, July is on a quest that he didn’t ask for and would rather not have been tasked with. Also like Roscoe, July could have stood up for himself to Peach, yet he didn’t. His wanderings are the result of others’ actions (Jake’s unlucky shot, for instance) but also of his own unwillingness or inability to take up the reins and direct his own life. Sedgewick provides a helpful contrasting example. His old life no longer fulfilled him, so he abandoned it and charted a new path into the wilderness. But July’s not ready to hear that particular sermon yet.
Themes
