Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lincoln in the Bardo, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Unity
Transition and Impermanence
Vice and Virtue
Empathy and Equality
Loss
Summary
Analysis
In the chapel, Willie once again has the chance to become one with his father. As he sits inside Lincoln, he tries to communicate that he’ll leave this place if that’s what his father tells him to do. As he does this, though, he bears witness to his father’s thoughts, as Lincoln ponders Willie’s final days.
Once again, Saunders seizes the opportunity to showcase Lincoln’s thoughts, this time using Willie’s occupation of his father as a way of showing the boy the truth, which is that he is dead.
Themes
