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Chapter 75
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
Big Zwey doesn’t like the fact that they’ve left the baby behind. Since he and Elmira are married, he tells Luke, it must be his. Clearly, he doesn’t understand anything about human reproduction. Luke laughs at Big Zwey, who feels sad to be made fun of, even though he doesn’t understand what Luke finds so funny. Luke tries to get Elmira in on the joke, but she’s burning up with fever. In Ogallala, Luke asks some cowboys where to find the doctor. Elmira comes out of her daze enough to ask after Dee Boot. The cowboys don’t know about the doctor, but they point the trio to the jail, if they want to find Dee.
Even Big Zwey—dimwitted though he is—worries that Elmira has left the baby behind. This in turn emphasizes the importance of having and valuing a family. But Ellie’s obsession with Dee doesn’t allow her to register anything else, even the dangerously unstable state of her own health. She literally cares more about finding Dee than her own life.
Themes
Big Zwey carries Elmira to the jail, where she finds Dee—more careworn and bedraggled than she could imagine—in the cell. He’s set to be hung in a week unless the townsfolk lynch him first. Some cowmen hired him to clear out settlers for them and, trying to scare a family off, he shot their boy. Big Zwey feels something wet on his arms. Ellie is hemorrhaging. Dee yells for the deputy, who sends for the doctor.
It seems that fate has caught up with Dee Boot, a driftless and immoderate gambler much like Jake. His crime hints at another source of chaos and upheaval which contradicts romantic versions of the wild west—range wars (between farmers and cattlemen, who wanted to use the land in vastly different ways) were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Themes
