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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 Newt finally encounters Indigenous people for the first time, it’s not like he imagines. The company is approaching the Kansas border through endless plains under a hot, dry sky. Deets reckons they have a thousand miles left to go, which seems hopeless to Pea Eye until Dish points out that, given their average speed, it should only take two months. At first, Newt thinks the men the Captain is talking to are cowboys. But when he gets closer, he sees that they’re unarmed, skinny Indigenous people riding thin horses. Call gives them one of the animals. That night, when Call rides with Gus back toward Lorena’s tent, he explains that the men were led by someone they know from the old days who once showed them kindness.
The longer the drive goes on, the more the cowhands must reckon with the enormity of the territory they’re trying to cross—their drive is between 1,500 and 2,000 miles by foot and horseback. It’s an enormous test of strength and resilience. By the time they reach Kansas, they’re about halfway there. Newt, likely based on Pea Eye’s fears and the stories he's heard from Gus, Call, and others, has an image in his head of Indigenous warriors as fearsome people. That’s a myth that contributes to the romanticization of the era—and to stereotypes about Indigenous people. Now he sees that they’re mostly just other human beings. And on the whole, thanks to the oppression and violence they’ve endured at the hands of settlers, they’re more downtrodden than fearsome.
Themes
When Lorena comes out of the tent the next morning, Gus is already up, watching the sunrise and thinking about how many things Jake’s ill-advised shot in an Arkansas saloon set in motion. Lorena doesn’t think much about Jake anymore, but she’s terrified that Gus—the only man she feels safe with anymore—will abandon her. Desperately, she offers him sex. Gently, he turns her down.
Gus muses on the way fate touches all their lives in much the same way as Roscoe did—but without the tinge of self-pity, because Gus accepts this truth (and because he’s a much more competent person). Tragically, Lorena’s society has taught her to believe that the only source of power she has is sex, so she tries to use it to her benefit now. But, in marked contrast to Jake and her prior lovers and clients, Gus cares about her as a person rather than a sex object or business proposition.
Themes
A strange cloud appears on the horizon, coming on too quickly to be a storm. It’s a swarm of grasshoppers. Gus and Lorena dive into the shelter of the tent. The rest of the cowhands aren’t so lucky. Newt thinks he’ll suffocate as the cloud descends, blocking out his senses. He can’t see the herd or the other cowhands, even though he knows some of them are nearby. Newt feels acutely miserable. But, as with the rainstorms and all the other trials they’ve encountered, he soon discovers that there’s a limit to how uncomfortable and unhappy he can get. Soon, resignation takes over as he waits for the misery to pass.
Things have been going well for the drive recently, so it seems that they’re overdue for a turn of bad luck like the grasshopper swarm. Amid the horror, Newt shows how much he’s matured over the drive. He’s still uncomfortable, but he’s become much more stoic (like Call), able to ride out difficulty because he knows it can only be temporary. Historically, grasshopper swarms were a huge threat, and this episode likely draws on the Locust Plague of 1874, in which Rocky Mountain locust swarms decimated more than two million square miles of prairie and farmland.
Themes
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When it does, however, Newt finds himself and about 60 cows separated from the rest of the herd. He starts off in what he thinks is the right direction, only to be intercepted by a band of Indigenous riders. He’s alarmed, then put off by their unfamiliar manners. They try to communicate, but neither side understands the other’s language. When they start urging the cows—and Newt—westward, off the track Newt set, he thinks they’re stealing his animals. But then they crest a ridge and see the main herd, and he realizes they were trying to help him. The only thing he can offer in thanks is a smile. When he rejoins the group, Call is talking to more Indigenous people in sign language. Dish and Soupy tell him they warned the company to take a route which will avoid a long stretch without water.
Newt assumes that the Indigenous people he encounters are hostile, and the communication barrier between them does nothing to help break through his prejudicial assumptions. This episode portrays Indigenous people in a good light (in contrast to other parts of het book). It also reinforces Newt’s youth and inexperience, reminding readers that he still has a lot to learn.
Themes
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