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6. Ulysses
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
Woolly and Duchess arrive at Woolly’s family home, where Sarah lives with her husband Dennis, but no one is there. They go in through the garage, where they find a convertible that Woolly inherited from his father. Woolly remembers when he dented the car, and Sarah defended him against Dennis’s anger. When the boys can’t get into the house through the garage, Duchess leaves. Woolly finds a key under a flowerpot and lets them into the house, where Woolly wanders around and remembers his childhood. In his room, he finds all his belongings packed into boxes, including a dictionary that he loved as a child for the comforting certainty in its definitions. He disliked his thesaurus, and he was expelled from one of his boarding schools for having a breakdown and setting the thesaurus on fire.
Woolly grew up with great privilege, having ready access to boarding schools and his own convertible. However, that privilege also comes with a set of rigid expectations that Woolly finds stifling. He appreciates structure and certainty, and the dictionary allows him to find that on his own terms rather than within the institutions that trouble him. Woolly is not capable of functioning within these institutions, which leads to his breakdown and expulsion.
Themes
Later, when Sarah returns, she apologizes for clearing out Woolly’s room to use as a nursery for the baby she’ll soon have. Woolly appreciates that Sarah is the only person in his family who apologizes sincerely, but he believes that she apologizes too much, and reassures her that he doesn’t mind her repurposing his room. Sarah asks him to return to Salina, but Woolly is preoccupied with their mother’s new husband. Sarah tells him that he “can’t begrudge [their] mother the comforts of companionship.”
Woolly sometimes struggles to make sense of the world around him, but his accurate assessment of Sarah demonstrates that is more emotionally intelligent than most people give him credit for. He is less empathetic toward his mother, though, and Sarah has to urge him to think of their mother’s loneliness. This contrast indicates that Sarah is more mature than Woolly, perhaps because she has taken on the responsibilities of a wife and expectant mother, while Woolly continues to avoid responsibility in favor of adventure.
Themes
