Taking Sides

Egypt—particularly the images of the Nile and the camel driver that feature in Lincoln’s geography textbook—is a motif that evolves alongside Lincoln’s character arc. The motif is first introduced on Page 5, when Lincoln is “looking at pictures of Egypt in his geography book. He admired the Sphinx […] and marveled at the Nile, a dark river that seemed to oppose gravity by flowing north. He looked closely at a camel driver smiling into the camera” (5). Egypt is here figured as a place as foreign to Lincoln as his new home in Sycamore.

From this point onward, Egypt and the geography book appear in moments of significant difficulty and/or self-revelation. During the novel’s first description of Lincoln attending his new school, Lincoln becomes bored and opens the textbook, which falls to the picture of the camel driver: “He’s like me, Lincoln thought. Brown as earth and no one knows his name” (14). An image that initially symbolized the unfamiliarity of Lincoln’s surroundings now resonates with Lincoln’s sense of how out of place he himself is (or feels), developing the theme of Identity as Multifaceted.

In another instance, Lincoln, troubled by his mother’s relationship with Roy, asks his mother whether he looks like his father, and she says, “You’re just like him.