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Chapter 4
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 wakes early the next day—he rarely sleeps for more than four or five hours a night—and heads outside to start sourdough biscuits for the morning’s breakfast. Cooking them outside helps keep the house as cool as possible, but Augustus also thinks that biscuits cooked over an open fire taste better. And doing it this way gives him a chance to enjoy the sunrise—the only part of the day beside sunset where there’s any beauty to be seen in the harsh countryside. When it’s bright enough, he reads from his Bible, too. Mostly, he reads from the prophets so he can copy their declamatory rhetorical style.
Despite his laid-back attitude, it’s clear that Augustus isn’t lazy. He doesn’t sleep all day and he does at least some of the work necessary to keep the Hat Creek boys alive. This adds further weight to the idea that his approach to life is a good one: it’s balanced between happiness and survival—and it pays attention to the role that happiness plays in making life survivable, too. He even picks the parts of the Bible he reads based on the pleasure they give him.
Themes
A groggy Call steps out into the yard. He struggles to wake up easily in the morning—it’s one of the few things about Augustus he envies. By the time Augustus brings the browned sourdough biscuits inside, a hungover Bolivar has begun stumbling around the kitchen, trying to make coffee and eggs. Soon everyone—Pea Eye, Newt, and Dish Boggett, who did indeed sleep on the porch—is awake and gathering around the table. Once Call’s eaten a little bit, he comes fully awake. He asks Dish if he’d be interested in joining the Hat Creek boys in raising a herd from Mexico and driving it north—a plan Call has been formulating for over a year. After a moment’s thought—and the realization that sticking around for a few days will give him the chance to court Lorena—Dish says yes.
In direct contrast to Gus’s attention on the things that please him, Call seems to notice the things the things in himself he dislikes much more than those he appreciates. In the morning, it becomes clear that the idea he mentioned in passing the previous night—raising a herd and driving it north—wasn’t just a lark. Once Call gets an idea, he sticks with it no matter what. Dish agrees, although not necessarily for the right reasons. His infatuation with Lorena makes him agree to a trip the consequences of which he cannot possibly predict.
Themes
The Captain steps onto the back porch, which has a view of the stage road that runs north to San Antonio. Two horsemen are approaching. One of them is Deets, a Black man and the fourth of the retired Rangers who make up the Hat Creek crew. A few days earlier, Call sent him north to San Antonio to make a bank deposit, figuring that bandits wouldn’t assume a Black man would have any valuables worth stealing. It takes a minute for Gus and Call to identify the other rider, but his posture is unmistakable: it’s Jake Spoon.
Lonesome Dove is removed, but it’s not completely isolated from larger urban centers like San Antonio. Indeed, the work the Rangers did in the 1830s and 1840s paved the way for a population boom—and associated development of culture and commerce—in the state of Texas. This further suggests that part of Call’s desire to go north is to prove that he’s still got the strength and wherewithal to face difficulty.
Themes
