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Themes
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Lincoln Highway, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Over the course of The Lincoln Highway, both Duchess (one of the young convicts) and Billy (the main character Emmett’s little brother) tend to interpret the events of the novel as a heroic story, but their motivations behind this tendency lead to vastly different impacts. Duchess invents and exaggerates stories to manipulate those around him. He presents himself as an adventurous hero to Billy to earn the boy’s trust and therefore Emmett’s; he further encourages the Watson brothers to help him steal Woolly’s trust fund by engaging with and adding to Billy’s dream of building a house for himself, Emmett, and Billy and Emmett’s mother. Duchess also uses stories to lie to himself. His narration frequently justifies his cruel and violent actions, such as when he convinces himself he would never have shot Emmett or Billy, despite his actions clearly showing otherwise. For Duchess, stories are indistinguishable from lies, and both exist to allow him to imagine and work towards a world where things always go his way.
Billy, on the other hand, makes sense of his life through the lens of stories, and this perspective helps him and the people around him find meaning in their lives. His prized possession is a book containing stories of heroes from myths and history, including Thomas Edison, Ulysses, and Achilles, and he shares these stories with others out of a genuine love for the stories. Billy befriends Ulysses because he shares a name with an ancient Greek hero, and Billy’s faith that Ulysses’s story will end the same way as the ancient myth restores hope to Ulysses, who has long resigned himself to being “forsaken.” Billy understands and empathizes with his brother Emmett’s anger issues because they are similar to those of Achilles, and this understanding allows Billy to help Emmett manage his anger by teaching him to pause before lashing out. Billy’s character development is also founded on his understanding of mythical archetypes, as he becomes less passive in his endeavors to become the “Xenos” (a helpful side character who aids the hero) in his brother’s story. The different intentions behind Duchess and Billy’s stories, and the different impacts they have, demonstrate that willfully deceptive stories are fundamentally selfish, but stories based in truth and empathy have the power to inspire people.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Stories, Truth, and Lies ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Stories, Truth, and Lies appears in each chapter of The Lincoln Highway. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Stories, Truth, and Lies Quotes in The Lincoln Highway
Below you will find the important quotes in The Lincoln Highway related to the theme of Stories, Truth, and Lies.
8. Emmett
Quotes
Billy touched the empty page with a hint of reverence.
––This is where Professor Abernathe invites you to set down the story of your own adventure.
––I guess you haven’t had your adventure yet, said Emmett with a smile.
––I think we’re on it now, said Billy.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
7. Ulysses
Quotes
––This must be who you were named for, Ulysses.
And though Ulysses had heard his name spoken ten thousand times before, to hear it spoken by this boy in this moment […] was as if he were hearing it for the very first time. […]
And Ulysses found himself sitting beside the boy and listening to him read, as if the boy were the seasoned traveler hardened by war, and he, Ulysses, were the child.
[Ulysses] understood that the consequences of what he had done should be irrevocable. That is what had led him […] into the life of a vagabond––a life destined to be lived without companionship or purpose.
But maybe the boy was right…
Maybe by placing his own sense of shame above the sanctity of their union, by so readily condemning himself to a life of solitude, he had betrayed his wife a second time.
7. Duchess (2)
Quotes
I felt a surge of tender feelings for the old man in a manner that made my hands sweat. But if the Bible tells us that the sons shall not have to bear the iniquity of the fathers, then it stands to reason that the fathers should not get to bear the innocence of the sons.
So I hit him.
7. Emmett (2)
Quotes
By tossing them together, it seemed to Emmett, Abernathe was encouraging a boy to believe that great scientific discoverers were not exactly real and the heroes of legend were not exactly imagined. That shoulder to shoulder they traveled through the realms of the known and unknown making the most of their intelligence and courage, yes, but also of sorcery and enchantment and the occasional intervention of the gods.
He felt the heat of indignation […] that this man whom he had only just met should take the liberty of scolding him as a parent scolds a child. But at the same time, Emmett understood that his taking umbrage at being treated like a child was childish in itself. Just as he knew that it was childish to feel […] jealous over [Billy and Ulysses’] sudden confederacy.
5. Duchess
Quotes
He was back at Salina. Back in that moment that he’d sworn he’d never think about again: taking Ackerly’s beating as the rest of us watched. It was the fire of justice that was burning through Townhouse now. The fire of justice that appeases the injured spirit and sets the record straight.
5. Ulysses
Quotes
––[…] the point of utter abandonment––that moment at which you realize no one will be coming to your aid, not even your Maker––is the very moment in which you may discover the strength required to carry on. The Good Lord does not call you to your feet with hymns from the cherubim and Gabriel blowing his horn. He calls you to your feet by making you feel alone and forgotten. For only when you have seen that you are truly forsaken will you embrace the fact that what happens next rests in your hands, and your hands alone.
4. Woolly
Quotes
––[W]ere it in our power to gather up all the personal stories that have been experienced […] around the world and across time, I haven’t the slightest doubt that doppelgangers would abound. […] It is one of the most basic principles of infinity that it must, by definition, encompass not only one of everything, but everything’s duplicate, as well as its triplicate. In fact, to imagine that there are additional versions of ourselves scattered across human history is substantially less outlandish than to imagine that there are none.
2. Abacus
Quotes
Though Abacus had no infirmities to speak of yet, his world too was shrinking. […] And then […] a little boy from Nebraska appears at his doorstep with a gentle demeanor and a fantastical tale. A tale not from a leather-bound tome, mind you. Not from an epic poem written in an unspoken language. […] But from life itself.
How easily we forget––we in the business of storytelling––that life was the point all along.
1. Emmett
Quotes
––You should have been there when your brother talked about the house he wants to build in California. I’ve never seen Woolly so excited. He could just picture the two of you living there together. If we go to the cops now, I’m telling you, within the hour this place is going to be crawling with people, and we’ll never get to finish what Woolly started.
