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Chapter 21
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in How Much of These Hills Is Gold, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Lies, and History
Civilization vs. Wilderness
Home
Identity and Gender
Family
Grief
Summary
Analysis
In the summer of 1867, rumors of a tiger sighting run wild in Sweetwater. Everyone is on edge. On the day that Lucy and her friend Anna are set to meet Anna’s fiancée (later identified as Charles) at the train station, they stop first at the home of a local woman who claims that the tiger stalked her while she was hanging up laundry in her yard. Anna bends and reverently traces its alleged pawprint in the mud of the yard. Lucy isn’t impressed. It’s the print of a bobcat at best, or maybe even just a very large housecat. Anna knows nothing of real wildness.
For Ma—and Sam and Lucy— the tiger represented home, safety, and protection. For the residents of Sweetwater, it represents the danger of the wild spaces that still exist beyond what settlers have civilized and domesticated. Thus, Anna’s interest in the tiger suggests some of what makes her friendship with Lucy successful—she’s a little wilder than the average resident of Sweetwater. But it also illustrates the limits of that similarity because it shows Lucy just how little Anna knows about real wilderness.
Active
Themes
At the train station, Lucy faces the event she’s dreaded all week: Charles’s arrival. She wishes Anna would say that she’s changed her mind. She feels overwhelmed by the smell emanating from a freight car full of live chickens, which smells like the shack in which she was once forced to live.
Although readers don’t yet know what Sam chose to do after Lucy walked into Sweetwater, it’s clear that her primary relationship is now with Anna. It’s also clear that she wants to recreate the closeness she once shared with her sibling—something that isn’t possible given Anna’s other commitments.
Active
Themes
Although Charles has light hair and Anna’s hair is as dark as Lucy’s, Charles and Anna are otherwise as alike as can be. Each is young and attractive, and each is attended by a silent and circumspect hired man. Each wears gold jewelry, and each pays so much attention to the other that they forget all about Lucy. Neither notices when the butcher’s boy, struggling to open the freight car door, suddenly pulls it free, releasing a cloud of dust and grime that coats Lucy’s previously pristine white linen dress. Neither notices when Lucy slips away to the river.
Active
Themes
