Previous
4. Woolly
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
While Woolly and Sarah are in the city, Duchess has the run of Sarah’s house, listening to her records and unlocking her china cabinet. He looks around the home office of Dennis, Sarah’s husband, and finds several pictures of Dennis but none of Sarah. While he’s exploring the house, Duchess finds a baseball bat and deems it the perfect weapon. He looks through Dennis’s wardrobe and steals some of his clothes.
The fact that Dennis has no pictures of Sarah in his office suggests that their marriage is rocky, hinting that Sarah’s idealized suburban life is just as imperfect as the Watsons’ life on their farm. Duchess treats Sarah’s house with a total disregard for her hospitality. He apparently doesn’t feel that he owes her a debt, which reiterates that Duchess adapts his philosophy of debts according to what suits him in the moment.
Themes
