Lonesome Dove

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985

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Themes

Friendship and Loyalty

Despite their near-constant annoyance with each other, Gus and Call have an unbreakable bond. It is not a romantic relationship, but it is deeper than a typical friendship. When Call decides to go on the cattle drive, Gus offers mild protestations, but as he later tells Clara, “Me and Call have always liked to get where we started for, even if it don't make a damn bit of sense” (780). He never seriously considers leaving Call. Even when he tells Clara that he would stay with her if she asked, he knows that she will not accept his offer. This improbable loyalty to one another is even more obvious for readers of Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon, and The Streets of Laredo, which each provide greater insight into Gus and Call at different times of their lives, as well as how they think about the other.

They are inseparable, the primary evidence being that Gus chooses to follow Call on the cattle drive when it represents the opposite of everything he stands for. Also, Call makes the arduous trek to return Gus’s body to Clara’s orchard because it is his friend’s dying wish. He knows that it is irrational, and he knows that Gus probably made the request because he enjoyed the theatrical nature of it, but he is loyal enough to his friend to honor it.

Gus and Lorena have another relationship that is not romantic—at least on Gus’s end, although Lorena comes to love him by the end of the novel—but it is also a deeper bond than mere friendship, born of shared hardship. When Blue Duck abducts Lorena, Gus immediately goes to rescue her. He knows that it should be him to go because he is the most loyal to her and the most likely person to find her.

The ultimate balancing—and mismanagement—of friendship, loyalty, and duty manifests in the fate of Jake Spoon. Even though he is different than Gus and Call, he is their friend. They bonded over hardships suffered while Rangers, and neither of them wish him ill. When they catch him with the Scuggs gang, duty requires that they hang their friend. He says, “I’d a damn sight rather be hung by my friends than by a bunch of strangers” (641). Jake doesn’t blame them, even though he tries briefly to convince them that it was not his fault. He knows that they are still his friends and that his execution is an example of their loyalty to the code of the Rangers.

Honor, Principles, Duty, and Purpose

Call is one of the most principled characters in the novel, even if he is not always sure about the source of his principles. Early on, when they enter Mexico to steal cattle from Pedro Flores, they are violating the law. Call justifies this action because the cattle were most likely already stolen. Much later, when he and Gus hang their friend Jake, it is because they regard it as their duty to uphold justice.

One of Gus’s principles is being argumentative and lazy, and his commitment to the ethos is impressive. However, his laziness only applies to hard work like digging wells. His honor is without question. When Blue Duck takes Lorena, he never questions whether he will go after her. He even refuses Jake’s help. Gus’s devotion to Clara is another example. From the first time he sees her, he knows that he will never love someone as deeply. This proves true across three novels and as many decades. Whenever another woman catches his eye, he is never distracted from Clara as his ultimate destination. She is his purpose throughout his life, even when his actions may suggest otherwise.

Call’s honor is called into question throughout the novel for being Newt’s father. The honorable thing to do would be to acknowledge the boy and give him his name. However, Call views his dalliances with Maggie as both shameful and weak. Because Maggie is a sporting girl, Call can reasonably assert doubt over Newt’s paternity. This spares him the dishonor of recognizing that he has a son whom he has left unclaimed for years. His principles bind him to duty; Newt would be his duty if there were no doubt as to who his father was. After Gus dies, Call finds that he no longer feels as if he has a purpose. Gus’s dying wish is a tremendous burden for Call, but it also simplifies his world again and gives him a new way to do his duty, which will distract him for several months.

Clara is the novel’s other character who lives the most strictly according to her principles. She believes in hard work, self-reliance, proper child rearing, the development of competence, and the duty of speaking one’s mind whenever necessary. Martin’s birth gives her a new sense of purpose and provides an honorable way for her to help create a good life.

The Brutality of Nature and the Flawed Dream of the American West

Call wants to take the trip north so that he can see Montana before the country is civilized. Despite the fearful times he spent as a Ranger, he misses having clear enemies to fight and goals to accomplish. As the herd travels north, McMurtry uses their trip to show the vanishing American West. It is not the romanticized version of the land painted by so many films and books. The trip is brutal and unpredictable, and quickly claims Sean’s life when water moccasins attack him. Each river crossing causes new turmoil and tension. The men endure terrifying storms of thunder and lightning but also of dust and locusts. The landscape and weather cycles are indifferent to them, but at times nature almost appears hostile to the travelers. Yet, Call is better suited to life on the plains than supervising a cattle outfit in a town as small as Lonesome Dove.

The people on the trail—all products of the same terrain—are often as dangerous and idiosyncratic as the land. Blue Duck and the Scuggs brothers are as vicious as it is possible to be and take the relative lawlessness in the remotest areas of America to prey on travelers and the defenseless. When July and Joe begin their travels, it is quickly obvious that they are out of their depth in such a harsh situation. This becomes clear when Blue Duck kills Joe, Roscoe, and Janey while Gus takes on Blue Duck’s men singlehandedly. Prior to exposure to such evil, people like July can scarcely imagine that it could exist.

Indigenous Americans are often romanticized or demonized in American lore, and McMurtry straddles these portrayals to explore Call’s relationship to Indigenous peoples as a man whose prejudices are culturally permissive during his time. Call mourns the loss of many of their Indigenous adversaries because they symbolized a version of the West that he has always loved, even though some were criminals. This dynamic is reductive of the human complexity and motivations of Indigenous peoples confronting European colonizers, but McMurtry employs Call’s nostalgia to highlight how his perception of the American west is changing, and to what degree Call has been able to (or failed to) modify his own outlook in return.

When they reach Montana, the country is as beautiful as Jake promised, but the snow is harsh, and the cold is unlike anything the men have experienced. Call’s dream of seeing the last bits of uncivilized country comes true, but at the cost of many lives, including his best friend. Nature is portrayed as unforgiving, and Western settlement had countless casualties.