Huntsville-Madison County Public Library discussion

Apocalypse Then: Philip Roth’s detour around History

Philip Roth published the novel, ‘The Plot Against America’ in 2004, inspired by Sinclair Lewis’s powerhouse nightmare alternate history from 1935, ‘It Can’t Happen Here’, imagining an America a few years after Lewis. Roth postulates another way that history might have been changed, emphasizing that major epochs with largely positive results, such as World War II, were not preordained just because in retrospect they seemed inevitable. Roth takes as a starting point a fictional version of his own family from the years when he was a young child.

In 1940, the Roth family, insurance salesman Herman Roth, wife Bess, and sons Sandy and Philip are a middle class Jewish family in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey. The news is full of flying hero Charles Lindbergh, who has soared on the wave of national pride in his long distance flights and sympathy for him and his wife because of their kidnapped and presumably murdered infant son. Lindbergh has claimed to be a pacifist and in the past has been sympathetic to Hitler and his emerging Reich. The European war that began in 1939 is not America’s war, according to Lindbergh, despite FDR’s insistence that the U.S. escalate aid to the ally Britain and, if necessary, enter the war just as it had done over 20 years earlier in World War I.

The antisemitism of Hitler has won a silent endorsement from Lindbergh, despite Lindbergh saying that he is not against the Jewish people. His isolationist platform is nonetheless customized to be inclusive of antisemites, homegrown as well as foreign and, with his glamorous public image, enables him to win the presidential election of 1940. This inflames Philip’s father Herman’s fear that what is happening to the Jews in Europe will spread to the American Jews in a matter of time. Herman’s fears are for the most part justified although he lives his life as a proud and outspoken Jew, unintimidated by the antisemitism subtly and often overtly expressed in public places. Herman is exercising his right of free speech, even when it puts his family in awkward positions. They planned a trip to Washington D.C. and, by God, they are going to see the nation’s capital so his sons will see and absorb first hand where the ideals of the founding fathers took root, the symbol of their freedom.

Meanwhile, Bess’ sister Evelyn, who is a substitute teacher when she’s not looking after her sick mother, is enchanted by Lindbergh and captivated by the speeches of Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf that support Lindbergh’s views and whose own public support place the focus on him as the leader of Jewish supporters of Lindbergh. The rabbi believes that Lindbergh has the intention of guiding the citizens, Jew and Gentile, to live in harmony. The 1940’s attitude toward non-whites in this alternate world is still the same as in our historic 1940’s. Evelyn eventually marries widower Lionel and they both go to D.C. where the rabbi will serve in Lindbergh’s cabinet.

This finalizes a rift between sisters Bess and Evelyn. As far as the raving Herman is concerned, Evelyn and her Lindbergh supporting husband are no longer welcome in his house. The seeds of discord sprout when older son Sandy is encouraged by his aunt to participate in Just Folks, a Lindbergh program in which young Jews spend a summer living with Midwest (Gentile) farm families, fostering an understanding between the groups. In Herman’s eyes, this is a covert attempt to splinter the unity of Jewish families, making them weaker and less able to resist. He relents after Bess presses him to agree to let Sandy try it for a few months. Sandy becomes enthused about the opportunities to live and work on a farm and likes the family he stays with. After giving a couple of speeches, Sandy even becomes an informal spokesman for the plan.

On the other end of the spectrum, Herman’s nephew, Alvin, a troubled teen orphaned after the deaths of his mother and father, Herman’s older brother, becomes so roused to come to the aid of the allies against Hitler that he flees to Canada to join the R.A.F. to fight, in which one of his legs is blown off. Embittered, Alvin returns to Herman’s family, where little Philip looks after him and becomes adept at changing his bandages and attaching his prosthetic leg.

In this volatile atmosphere, Walter Winchell gives his regular radio addresses, regular anti-fascist diatribes in which he coins insulting nicknames for Lindbergh and others on the far right (the practice of name-calling that is alive and well in the 21st century). Winchell is the hero of Jews such as Herman and becomes a very public target when he announces his candidacy for President. Winchell’s very public appearances, without bodyguards, are blatant invitations for assassination, which inevitably happens at one of his speeches before he gets five words out of his mouth.

This sequence of events is a powder keg for indiscriminate violence throughout the country. After giving a speech that says nothing to address the extensive violence in the country--“Our country is at peace. Our people are at work. Our children are at school. I flew down here to remind you of that. Now I’m going back to Washington so as to keep things that way”—he climbs back in his plane and takes off, never to be heard from again.

The next couple of weeks are even more chaotic after Vice-President Burton Wheeler takes charge. Firings occur, more Jews are killed, a complete nightmare ensues in which rumors arise about the fate of Lindbergh.

Without going into explicit details, I will say that Roth restores the historical time frame in 1942 with FDR in office and World War II continuing as it did until 1945. Much like Shakespeare’s tragedies, widespread death occurs, culminating in a dramatic climax, after which some semblance of world order is restored. We are left feeling, “It was all just a bad dream. It’s over now.”

‘The Plot Against America’ is a gripping, absorbing, fully realized delineation of a nightmare. It is told from the perspective of the adult “Philip” remembering a seminal episode in his childhood. The national climate in which an isolationist hero such as Charles Lindbergh can charm the public and win an election is a familiar scenario in American politics. The resolution back to our historical timeline is a bit rapid. I don’t think anything in American politics happens overnight like that, even in our virtual online information age. Nevertheless, it is a profound cautionary tale. To paraphrase George Santayana’s quote about forgetting the past, “Those who ignore the past (even an alternative version) may be destined to repeat something very similar.”