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1. Sally
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
Emmett drives to Woolly’s family’s Adirondack house and searches the massive property for his friends. He looks through various rooms, looking through the photographs in the hallway that celebrate the family’s heritage, and he thinks of how his father Charlie left that kind of heritage behind. Emmett continues searching until he finds Woolly, dead from overdosing on a mixture of his own medicine and pills that Sarah is addicted to. Emmett, horrified and stricken with grief, notes that Sarah will never forgive herself for her part in Woolly’s death.
Emmett understands what it is like to feel guilty for another person’s death, and even in the midst of his own grief he empathizes with how Sarah will feel. The ease with which Emmett empathizes with others sets him apart from Duchess. Emmett also differs from Duchess in his feelings about his father. Emmett resents that Charlie left behind a life of privilege to pursue his own dreams, but Emmett understands why his father made his choices and doesn’t dwell on them.
Themes
Emmett leaves the room and hears Duchess downstairs, and his grief turns into rage. He finds Duchess desperately hitting the safe with an ax. He accuses Duchess of letting Woolly kill himself, but when Duchess protests that he didn’t find Woolly until he was already dead, Emmett acknowledges that the tragedy isn’t Duchess’s fault. Emmett moves to call the authorities about Woolly’s death, but Duchess stops him, arguing that Woolly would have wanted them to get the money from the safe. He asks Emmett to crack the safe with tools from the boathouse, but Emmett grabs Duchess and angrily tells him that there was never any money; Woolly concocted the “fairy tale” so Duchess would bring him to the only place he felt at home. Emmett demands that Duchess return to Salina. Just then, Billy arrives. Duchess attacks Emmett and drags Billy into the house.
Duchess’s obsession with opening the safe has caused his selfishness to escalate. He is so desperate for the money that he can no longer hide his disregard for others behind a charming facade. He shrugs off Woolly’s death as secondary to the priority of opening the safe, and when Emmett proves that he will be an obstacle in Duchess’s plan, Duchess resorts to violence. His willingness to threaten Billy brings Duchess closer to the character of Pastor John, who already resembled Duchess in his manipulation and self-delusion.
Themes
