The Lincoln Highway

For Emmett, Billy, Sally, Woolly, and Duchess, their relationships with and perceptions of their fathers factor prominently in their interactions with the world and their sense of themselves in it. Rendered more pronounced by the relative lack of influence on the part of their mothers, all of whom are absent in various forms, their fathers’ roles exude an even broader significance. Ranging from outright adoration to complex confliction or barely contained contempt, each character’s own perception of their father propels them in their decisions and behaviors. When Woolly’s father enlisted in the navy before the Second World War, his departure and subsequent death issued a crushing blow to the young boy, and the emotional impacts of this loss are obvious to Sarah, who has always been closest to him. Woolly’s preoccupation with his childhood, particularly with the time he spent at his family camp for the annual July 4th festivities, serves as his means of maintaining a connection to a happy time when his father was still with him. Woolly frequently expresses the wish that his father were with him, especially in times of uncertainty.

For Emmett, his father’s continued failings in his attempt to make a livelihood as a farmer were a source of embarrassment and shame. The financial struggles their household endured as a result inspired Emmett to pursue a career as a carpenter, so he might avoid placing himself in his father’s position where a lack of skill might put him in debt and in danger of losing everything. Emmett struggles to understand why his father left Boston and the family there of which he spoke so fondly, but he comes to realize that, he and his father are the same when it comes to their dreams of pursing a different life. When Emmett realizes the extent of the security and affluence his father rejected in the service of pursing his own way in the world, Emmett begins to respect his father’s choice, even if he does not understand it.

Duchess’s experience with his father is one of emotional and psychological abuse suffered at the hands of a man whose greed, narcissism, and alcoholism ultimately lead to the framing of his son for a serious crime he himself had committed. Though any intention to kill his father is not expressly stated in his narrative, Duchess’s planned trip to Syracuse and the Louisville Slugger he brings along indicate his plan to cause his father serious physical harm. Although Duchess harbors hatred for his father, who abandoned him, collected him at the orphanage two years later only to watch him sentenced to time in Salina for a crime he himself committed, Duchess retains a fondness for the culture of his childhood. He regularly recites the lines from Shakespeare his father so often performed and cherishes the relationships and experiences he garnered in his father’s company. There is a sense of admiration for his father, his bravado and skills of manipulation, and Duchess has not been able to avoid absorbing so many of these qualities himself, including his selfishness, which are subsequently visited on all those with whom Duchess interacts.

Sally rarely manages to contain the resentment she feels for her father. She perceives him as greedy, entitled, and condescending, and she detests the role she has been made to play as his caretaker and housekeeper since the death of her mother. Tensions are present throughout her childhood and young adulthood, but by the time she confronts her father for the speed with which he purchased the Watson farm, the moment her father blames himself for the way she turned out and accuses her of being “ruined,” Sally makes the a decision that will communicate to her father that she considers her responsibility for him at an end. Leaving the farm for good, Sally distinguishes herself as a “goer” and not a “stayer,” rejecting her father’s complacent life of farming and selfish expectations that his daughter cook and clean for him without cessation and choosing what she comes to see as the virtue of finding her own path and purpose in the world.