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1. Billy
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
After trying and failing to open all the doors in the house, Emmett breaks a window and comes inside. Duchess breaks the rifle cabinet and approaches Emmett with a gun. Emmett tells Duchess that he has to go to the police because the authorities blame Duchess and Emmett for the assaults on the cowboy in Morgen and on Ackerly, and as long as the police are looking for Duchess they will be looking for Emmett. Duchess raises the gun. Emmett knows Duchess might shoot him, but he also knows Duchess is arrogant, so he continues to walk toward Duchess. He stops only when Billy emerges from behind Duchess.
Emmett has strongly held morals, but his conviction to stop Duchess is not an act of pure heroism. He is acting from a place of practicality––as long as Duchess is on the run, so is Emmett. This suggests that a concern for oneself is not inherently immoral: in fact, it can be more productive than Billy’s idealistic model of heroism. However, Emmett cares more about Billy’s wellbeing than his own, so he stops approaching Duchess when Billy might be in danger.
Themes
Duchess turns the gun on Billy, but Billy is unafraid. Over their time together, Billy explains, he has deduced that Duchess can’t read. Duchess therefore hasn’t read the rules for closing the house and doesn’t know that the guns are unloaded when Woolly’s family is not in residence. Emmett grabs the rifle, and Duchess protests that he would never have pulled the trigger. Billy quietly reminds Emmett to keep his temper in check, so Emmett calms himself and strikes Duchess with the butt of the rifle.
Duchess is a skilled liar, but Billy is even more adept at observing the truth. Even as Duchess loses control of the situation, he tries to regain some power by ingratiating himself to Emmett. The repercussions of his fight with Jimmy Snyder and the responsibility of caring for Billy have made Emmett mature past his anger issues, so he lets Duchess live and removes him from the confrontation without excess brutality.
Themes
Billy gives Emmett Woolly’s suicide note, which asks that his inheritance be distributed evenly among Emmett, Billy, and Duchess. Billy says that he suspected Woolly might be “sick” when he gave Billy his family watch. He then brings Emmett to the safe, which unlocks with a combination that corresponds to the day Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Emmett knows if he turns Duchess in to the police, the authorities will be suspicious of Woolly’s decision to give his friends his inheritance.
If Duchess had paid attention to Woolly’s stories about his family, he might have been able to guess the combination to the safe. Instead, Duchess regarded Woolly as little more than a tool. Billy, on the other hand, had no ulterior motive for listening to Woolly’s stories; he is just earnestly interested in other people. That interest, along with Billy’s intelligence, lets Billy figure out the combination to the safe.
Themes
Emmett decides to take two-thirds of the money and leave Duchess with his share, so Emmett and Billy clean the house of any trace that they were there and drag Duchess outside. They say a final goodbye to Woolly, then return to the Studebaker to pick up Sally. Emmett agrees to take a detour so they can travel along Billy’s plotted route on the Lincoln Highway, which will get them to San Francisco by July 4.
July 4 is Independence Day in America. Fittingly, it was the day that the Watson brothers’ mother struck out to pursue her own independence, and it is the day that the brothers will start their new lives. They will follow their mother along the Lincoln Highway––a symbol of the possibilities for adventure before them, but also a representation of their unresolved issues with their mother.
Themes
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