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1. Emmett (3)
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Lincoln Highway, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Stories, Truth, and Lies
Debts and Atonement
Maturity and Responsibility
Adventure
Pride vs. Humility
Summary
Analysis
Duchess wakes in a rowboat on the lake by the house, and he blames Emmett for “leap[ing] to the wrong conclusions” about Duchess’s intention with the gun. As Duchess sees Emmett and Billy drive away in the Studebaker, he notices the boat has no oars, and he realizes Billy must have deduced that Duchess can’t swim. The boat itself is in disrepair, so Duchess can’t lean forward to count the money Emmett has left in the boat. Duchess tries to use his hands to paddle to shore, but the breeze starts to blow away the cash.
Even after threatening Emmett at gunpoint, Duchess refuses to accept responsibility for destroying their friendship, instead blaming Emmett for misunderstanding Duchess’s intentions. This speaks to how far Duchess has distanced himself from the truth. Emmett’s choice to leave Duchess on a boat with his share of the inheritance forces Duchess to choose between his own safety and the money he has pursued obsessively throughout the story.
Themes
Duchess grabs the money, loses his balance, and falls into the water. As he begins to drown, he finds himself on a crowded street full of people he knows standing frozen in place: Woolly, Billy, Sally, Sarah, and Emmett. Duchess bows to each one of them and wonders which Shakespeare play includes the line, “The rest is silence.”
Duchess risks his own safety to take the money, and he dies because of it. He drowns before he can find his father—and with debts still owed to all the people he sees on that crowded street. “The rest is silence” comes from the play Hamlet, and it is the last line Hamlet speaks before he dies. Duchess is haunted by his father, the Shakespearean actor, whom Duchess never confronted for his mistreatment.
Themes
