The Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway’s protagonist is 18-year-old Emmett Watson, whose life is permanently altered when a thrown punch accidentally and subsequently becomes a lethal blow.

Raised in the shadow of his father’s failed attempts to eke out life as a farmer in rural Nebraska, his family abandoned by his mother at the age of eight, all of Emmett’s extended family members, who he has never met, are back in Boston, where his mother and father lived until moving to Nebraska. Though he has largely dismissed thoughts of his mother since her sudden departure, he was aware of her unhappiness, and he too dreams of a life off the Watson farm. Emmett is extremely close with his younger brother, Billy, who was only an infant when their mother left and for whom Emmett has accepted a significant amount of responsibility. Emmett’s primary goal before being sent to Salina was to develop a marketable skill that would ensure he would never find himself in the position his father was in. Independently, he learned carpentry and bought himself a car. His intentions at the beginning of the novel are to move with his brother to Texas, where he will use his carpentry skills to infiltrate the property acquisition and home improvement market and start his own business.

It is accepted by all those who know him that Emmett is a young man of strong morals and integrity. Emmett’s primary personal struggle is with his attempt to manage his temper; he is quick to anger and impulsive in his propensity for lashing out. While at Salina his father died of cancer, and on returning home he is eager to sell the family home and accept responsibility for the raising of his brother. Though he is committed to incorporating more pacifism in his approaches to conflict, Emmett is described as tall, physically imposing, and able to win in most physical confrontations. His appearance is likened to Gary Cooper when he finds himself at Ma Belle’s brothel, and women appear to respond favorably to him. 

A precocious and inquisitive eight-year-old, Billy Watson is both wise beyond his years and naïve in his desire to believe the best of others. Billy is enthusiastic, extroverted, capable of relating to anyone on their level, and able to maintain a positive rapport with strangers and close friends alike. Billy deeply and unconditionally loves his older brother Emmett, who he relies on for guidance and protection.

Billy is a voracious seeker of knowledge and information, and he is eager to share the facts he has memorized and the observations he makes. Although Billy often places himself in vulnerable positions by being too forthcoming and trusting with strangers, he also displays tremendous insight and reasoning skills with respect to his ability to deduce and intuit information about others they do not realize are apparent to him. Although Billy is willing to accept the knowledge that developing friendships requires time, his primary flaw is his willingness to develop friendships with others without first considering the risks to himself.

Raised by a father who worked as an actor but survived by playing the constant role of a con artist, Duchess is fundamentally lacking in many of the characteristics most essential to effectively maintaining positive relationships with others. Raised on the road and on the theatre and vaudeville scenes, Duchess has a sentimental attachment to the theatre culture of his youth, which he embraces and appreciates despite the fact that it is a link to his father.

Duchess has developed his own brand of morality, derivative of experiences in two of the institutions he has found himself in since childhood. Duchess attempts to make sense of the world despite how he was treated by his father. The settling of accounts system by which he lives offers him a structured, concrete system through which he can manage and weigh the actions of himself and others, and he clings to this algorithm because his upbringing with his father failed to provide him with a well-defined sense of right and wrong. He expresses the desire to be good and squared away with others, but his fundamentally skewed perception of himself in relation to others causes him to fixate on certain transgressions and wrongs while ignoring others that might be considered equally if not more egregious.

Duchess demonstrates moments of admiration, tenderness, and care for others, but he is unwaveringly willing to sacrifice their best interests and violate their rights in order to achieve his personal goals. He sees himself as a benevolent and just person, unable to separate the actions he takes, which he often thinks are on behalf of others, from what others might want or need. He paints himself as Woolly’s caretaker, rationing Woolly’s medicine and watching out for him, but as with his other relationships he fails to see how his usury outweighs his generosity. He regularly and artfully attempts to restructure and reframe his position and motives when he is caught in circumstances in which he knows that consequences of his actions are imminent, and he is willing to lie and omit pertinent information to protect his own interests. He is lacking in boundaries, availing himself of others’ possessions and resources. He does unsolicited favors for others in the interests of settling accounts, but while he keeps track of certain of his own offenses, many of these offenses he willfully ignores. He is an unreliable narrator, which is demonstrated through the contrasting accounts of other characters’ experiences and perceptions of his behavior.