Lonesome Dove Literary Elements

Western Fiction

The story is set on the American frontier in the 1870s. The main characters set out from the Texas border town of Lonesome Dove and travel through various states and territories until they reach Montana.

The story is told from a third person omniscient point of view. This type of narration moves from one character to another, presenting the story from different perspectives.

Violent, Tragic, Nostalgic

Retired Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call are the novel's main protagonists. Blue Duck is the primary antagonist, though other characters such as the Suggs brothers also serve as adversaries.

The major conflict is the cattle drive itself due to the external and internal obstacles the characters face along the way to Montana.

Since the novel tracks different storylines, there are multiple climactic moments. These include Augustus rescuing Lorena after Blue Duck kidnapped her, July finding everyone in his party dead, Martin's birth, and Augustus and Pea Eye's fight with Native men. Readers might expect the outfit's arrival in Montana to be the point of highest tension, but ironically this moment is extremely anticlimactic.

- The storm that appears at the end of the 30th chapter foreshadows the troubles the camp will have to face and the dangers they will encounter.

- At the end of Part I, Augustus tells Call, “I’ve lived about a hundred to your one. I’ll be a little riled if I end up being the one to die in the line of duty, because this ain’t my duty and it ain’t yours, either" (Chapter 25). This statement foreshadows the irony of Augustus's death.

- Roscoe has a premonition about never returning to Fort Smith in Chapter 29.

- Augustus predicts his own death in Chapter 39 by telling Newt that if the outfit has more bad luck, he doubts he will make it.

- In Chapter 40, Jake tells Lorena that he expects to be hanged one day because a fortune-teller once told him that would be his fate.

- In Chapter 43 when a group of soldiers tell Roscoe that he is lucky to run into them and not a group of Native people (who would maim and kill him), this hints at Roscoe's death.

When Deets returns with Jake Spoon and tells Call that he found "the prodigal," he alludes to the Biblical story of the prodigal son (Chapter 6). In the parable, a son squanders his inheritance and then returns home to ask his father for forgiveness.

The novel is abundant with natural imagery that paints a picture of the changing American landscape in the 1870s. The frontier is at once a physical and psychological place, fraught with tension. The travelers are at the mercy of nature, and some do not survive. For example, Sean O'Brien dies from snakebites and Bill Spettle dies after being struck by lightning. Hostile relations with other groups and individuals also contributes to the novel's violent imagery. There are countless examples, including Lorena's brutal treatment at the hands of her captors, the deaths of July's companions, and the Suggs brothers' murder spree. Overall, McMurtry's images capture the beauty, danger, and violence of 19th-century America.

The novel starts and ends in the town of Lonesome Dove despite Call's intention to begin anew elsewhere. The journey also did not fundamentally change Call's personality, as evidenced by his inability to claim Newt as his son.

When the men use the word "head" to discuss the number of cattle, this could be an example of both metonymy and synecdoche.

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