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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Plague of Doves, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ancestry, History, and Interconnection
Punishment vs. Justice
Land, Ownership, and Dispossession
Passion vs. Love
Faith, Music, and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
Mooshum finishes his story just as the storm arrives. In a rush, Evelina takes all the clothes Clemence has hung down from the clothesline. Clemence complains to her father about Geraldine. “She cares for him,” Clemence frets. “She even knows about that woman doctor he was loving on the sly. You know who.” Evelina wonders what Geraldine has done wrong, and how the mysterious man Clemence references is involved.
The gravity of Mooshum’s story about the hangings initially seems to be completely at odds with the gossipy frustration Clemence feels with her sister. But as the novel’s plot progresses—and as readers discover what Clemence is talking about—it becomes clear just how much Mooshum’s tragic history has shaped every detail of this more intimate present-day tension.
Themes
The next day, Evelina asks Shamengwa what happened to the White men in Mooshum’s story. Though Shamengwa is upset with Mooshum for sharing this tale, Mooshum continues, telling Evelina that “the Buckendorfs got rich, fat, and never died out.” Indeed, even now, the Buckendorfs and Wildstrands own much of the land in the county.
Just as the hanging tree still stands on the Wolde family farm, the Buckendorfs’ lasting prosperity in Pluto acts as a tangible, omnipresent marker of historical injustice. Even the very geography of the town reflects this brutal, unfair past, as uneven land distribution echoes and repeats decades of uneven violence.
Themes
Evelina wonders how Mooshum survived being hanged, and Shamengwa replies that they were “never going to hang him to death.” Mooshum and Shamengwa begin arguing, with Mooshum insisting that he saw the same things as Holy Track and that “the doves are still up there.” Evelina does not understand the debate. A few minutes later, when Neve Harp arrives, Evelina scurries away.
Shamengwa’s foreboding words hint that Mooshum’s role in the hangings is more complicated than he has let on, a complication that will extend throughout the entire narrative. Mooshum’s mention of doves, a symbol for the power of storytelling and “legend” in the novel, now suggests that telling Holy Track’s story helps preserve the truth of his memory (despite the violence, the doves are “still” there).
Themes
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Neve plans to write a newsletter about why the largely White town of Pluto is inside the original reservation boundaries. Evelina observes the sorrow Clemence, Mooshum, and Shamengwa all seem to feel—“the loss of their land,” Evelina realizes, “was lodged inside of them forever.” “What you are asking,” Mooshum at last replies to Neve, “is how was it stolen?” This question will haunt Evelina for a long time.
Just like the Buckendorfs and the Wildstrands, the White Harp family benefited greatly from the U.S. government’s dispossession and redistribution of Indian land. In addition to once again underscoring just how much history is written into every property line in Pluto, Mooshum’s loaded question to Neve—in which he implicitly accuses her as one of the land thieves—shows that even warm, flirtatious relationships like the one Mooshum shares with Neve can quickly be soured by the past.
Themes
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Evelina goes to make some tea. As the kettle boils, Clemence puts an arm on her daughter’s shoulder. Evelina asks her mother about the lynching, and Clemence gently tells Evelina why Mooshum was not hanged “to death” because his wife Junesse was Eugene Wildstrand’s daughter. Clemence starts to tell Evelina what is going on with Geraldine (it has something to do with Judge Coutts), but then Clemence stops herself.
Evelina now learns the truth that she is not just Mooshum’s granddaughter but also Eugene Wildstrand’s great-granddaughter, meaning that she is a direct descendant of both a victim and a perpetrator of the awful 1911 hangings. This information thus marks Evelina’s first brush with perhaps the novel’s central challenge, which is how to deal with inheriting opposite sides of history.
Themes
After learning the story of the hanging, Evelina becomes obsessed with lineage, tracing and erasing the family trees of everyone in Pluto in her little notebook. Evelina keeps asking Mooshum for details, but he will never again be as frank with her; later, Evelina realizes he was drunk the first time he told the story. Try as she might, Evelina sees Mooshum differently now.
Evelina’s ancestral contradiction perhaps represents a kind of survivor’s guilt, a feeling both Evelina and her grandfather seem to struggle with. So just as Evelina turned to language to make sense of her feeling for Corwin, she now puts pen to paper again, as if by neatening up the lines of these family trees she can erase her own confusion.
Themes
