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2. Duchess
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 wakes to find that Duchess and Woolly are gone. Woolly has left a note apologizing to Sarah and telling her not to worry. Emmett helps Sarah clear Woolly’s old room of his belongings and paint the walls for the new baby. Sarah tells Emmett that, since his Studebaker won’t be ready until the following day, Emmett and Billy are welcome to spend another night in her house.
Emmett is learning to accept help from other people, including women, as he doesn’t reject Sarah’s offer to let him and Billy stay another night. He is still not completely at ease with this, though, and he tries to make himself useful by helping Sarah prepare the nursery.
Themes
Sarah explains that Woolly was sent to Salina because he saw a firetruck on the road with no firefighters attending it, so he took the truck and tried to drive it to a station house. A group of firefighters were unable to put out a fire because they couldn’t find their truck. She remarks that people’s virtues usually get them into more trouble than their vices. Emmett thinks that Sarah’s dangerous virtue is forgiveness.
While Emmett was sent to Salina because of his temper, and Duchess was sent there because of his father, Woolly was sent to Salina because he can’t process the consequences of acting on his yearning for excitement. Woolly’s desire for adventure does not make him selfish: he wanted to help the firefighters by returning their truck even more than he wanted to drive a fire engine. However, that desire does make him short-sighted, which is worsened by the difficulty Woolly has with thinking things through.
Themes
