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5. Pastor John
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
Ulysses finds himself back in the coffin and fights to get out. While he does, he hears Billy’s voice, and remembers where he is. He wills himself to consciousness and searches for Billy and Pastor John. He finds John with the coin collection and hits him with his own shovel. Billy emerges and helps tend to Ulysses’s wound, and Ulysses suggests that they don’t report the incident to Emmett, who already has too much on his mind. Ulysses leaves Billy, promising that he will bring Pastor John to the police. Instead, he drags him up an outdoor staircase and lets him fall down the stairs to a river.
Ulysses is thrust back into the day he accepted he was utterly alone, but he breaks free from that memory at the sound of Billy’s voice. His love for Billy’s stories has grown into a fatherly love for Billy, which has given Ulysses something to live for. He saves Billy by fighting off Pastor John, and Ulysses continues to protect him by shielding Billy from the truth when Ulysses leaves Pastor John to die.
Themes
