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Chapter 68
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
In Dodge City, July buys a new horse. He spends two days looking for Ellie before giving up and setting his sights on Abeline—the other place he remembers her talking about. Before he goes, he visits the post office and sends a note home to Peach, telling her about Roscoe’s and Joe’s deaths and adding that the town should choose a new sheriff. Amazingly, when July asks, the post office clerk remembers Elmira. He suggests July talk to Ellie’s old friend Jennie, at the third saloon down the street. He knows they were both sweet on Dee Boot, who isn’t dead of smallpox but alive and well in Ogallala or else Deadwood.
After a long string of unfortunate circumstances, July finally has a stroke of good luck in Dodge City. Unfortunately, the good luck of getting some news about Elmira comes at the cost of painful realizations about the woman he married and how she took him in. This in turn adds weight to the fears some of the book’s male characters express about the power women wield over them through sex.
Themes
At the saloon, the bartender serves July whiskey while he waits for Jennie. When she appears, she’s surprised to find herself talking to Ellie’s husband. What he tells her about Ellie’s disappearance doesn’t surprise her, though. When Ellie doesn’t like a place, Jennie says, she just up and leaves. As for her cold treatment toward Joe, Jennie doesn’t think she should have had a baby in the first place.
Jennie has a hard but realistic attitude toward life. She doesn’t pull her punches or say things in an untrue but nice way. And as painful as this disillusionment is for July, it’s also helpful, because it starts to give him back power over his life. Realizing that Ellie isn’t the kind of person he should allow to dictate his life brings him one step closer to choosing for himself rather than letting circumstances dictate.
Themes
July is totally drunk, and although he willingly follows Jennie up the stairs to her room, he’s too sick to have sex with her. She finds him a quiet place to vomit undisturbed. After a while, his stomach settles, and he sits up, watching life pass by in the streets and thinking. He envies the ease of the cowboys wandering through town. Just as he’s preparing to go, Jennie escorts a satisfied client out of her room. July asks her if she’d ever quit, and she says no. She likes the excitement of her life. She encourages July to go home and forget Ellie. Silently, he leaves the saloon, retrieves his horse from the livery, and rides out of town.
None of the four sex workers in the book has seemed particularly ashamed of her profession, even if it wasn’t exactly how she saw her life going (as in Lorena’s case). Thus, the book makes a point of showcasing female autonomy and suggesting that women’s power comes not from their ability to manipulate men, but from making choices about their own lives and fates. This in turn contributes to the book’s overall idea that a good life is a proactive life, one in which a person can find pleasure even amidst difficulty.
Themes
