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Chapter 80
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 July gets back to Clara’s, he so upset that he can barely speak. He’s so upset she refrains from chiding him about the errands she asked him to run that he forgot. After dinner, Clara asks him to help her turn Bob over. Then, she brings him out to the porch and offers him a cool rag for his aching head. July says that he found Elmira, who wasn’t glad to see him. He hopes she’s just addled from the long trip. But Clara knows Elmira isn’t addled. She just doesn’t want her baby or her husband. Sometimes that happens. July can’t take this idea in.
Clara cares for July in a way that no one else—especially no other woman—has done. She is the antithesis of Elmira, in fact: where Elmira abandoned her husband and children, Clara still loves her dead babies, took in Martin, and cares for her disabled husband even though he’s mostly a liability at this point. July can’t understand why Elmira left because in his mind, he did the things he was supposed to. He expects life to go a certain way, and the process of realizing it doesn’t is painful.
Themes
Clara revisits the subject in the morning, offering to raise Martin if neither Elmira, July, nor any of their kin want him. But she wants July to decide before she gets too attached. July rides back into town to ask Elmira, but she’s already gone. The news that Elmira and Big Zwey drove straight into Sioux territory sends him into a panic. He races back toward Clara’s to get his gear and pursue them. But by the time he gets there, he’s lost his resolve. Clara finds him weeping in a shed when it’s time for supper.
July starts to follow Elmira on reflex yet again, but he knows this has earned him nothing but grief, and it hasn’t even helped him to win Ellie back. Although he experiences this as a loss of resolve, the book clearly positions it as an improvement. July makes a conscious choice for the first time in a long time, instead of letting the winds of fate and others’ choices blow him about.
Themes
