The Lincoln Highway

Why does Towles alternate between first person and third person limited approaches depending on who the narrator of a particular section is? Who does he choose for each approach and why? How do these choices shape and inform the narrative?

As Warden Williams mentions to Emmett, there are different types of young men who find themselves at Salina, and Emmett is not like the majority of them. Emmett, Woolly, and Duchess all have drastically different backgrounds and upbringings; how do their origins dictate the circumstances that bring them to Salina, and how do those origins dictate how they fair afterwards? How are their experiences at Salina and their individual values connected to their upbringings related?

Sherriff Petersen recognizes how reactions to having been violent or having witnessed violence often manifest in two subsequent extremes, where the individual either internalizes or externalizes their subsequent responses. How does Emmett incorporate or exemplify his warning about needing to stick up for himself? How does Emmett recognize his need to balance passivity and self-preservation throughout the novel?