Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in It Can’t Happen Here, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
American Fascism
Liberalism and Tolerance
Morality and Resistance
Political Communication and Mass Media
Summary
Analysis
To Doremus Jessup’s horror, the Corpos accuse an innocent local newspaperman of publishing the New Underground pamphlets and send him to the concentration camp. Emma Jessup doesn’t understand why Doremus bothers to criticize the authorities, but she’s glad that Lorinda Pike left town (since Pike’s “wild crazy ideas” are a bad influence on Doremus). Still, Emma is annoyed at Doremus’s irregular schedule, new working-class friends, and obsession with politics. Like her grandson David, Emma quite enjoys watching the Minute Men march through town.
Emma Jessup cares less about the imprisoned editor than about how Doremus’s activism reflects on her reputation. She is aware of neither the New Underground’s true purpose nor Doremus’s affair with Lorinda Pike. In this sense, she represents the ordinary middle-class Americans who simply ignore things that don’t affect their daily lives. Like fascism, this mindset puts style before substance—Emma thinks only about her own daily life, not about moral principles or anyone else’s lives. Needless to say, Lewis viewed this small-mindedness as a dangerous trend in American life, because it encourages people not to recognize or fight for one another’s rights.
Themes
Just as predicted, Dewey Haik takes over as Secretary of War, while Francis Tasbrough becomes the District Commissioner. However, the new Provincial Commissioner is not John Sullivan Reek, but rather Judge Effingham Swan. (Swan immediately—but courteously—arrests Reek and several assistant commissioners.)
Judge Swan’s arrest spree shows how dangerous it can be to build a government around self-interest, corruption, and arbitrary, unlimited power. In such administrations, officials stand to gain by sabotaging one another and destabilizing the entire chain of command. In contrast, when officials are democratically elected or appointed based on merit, they have strong incentives to be competent and cooperative.
Themes
Meanwhile, the Corpos start earnestly pursuing the New Underground. Doremus Jessup notes a Corpo spy repeatedly striking up conversations with him, and he starts taking extra precautions whenever he visits Buck Titus. One day, he notices Shad Ledue following him on his route to Titus’s house. When Dan Wilgus arrives, he reports that Aras Dilley was prowling around outside the house in disguise. Jessup, Wilgus, Titus, and Father Perefixe dismantle their secret printing press, and John Pollikop drives it to Truman Webb’s house before dawn. The next day, Julian Falck invites Shad Ledue and Emil Staubmeyer over to play poker at Buck Titus’s house—they look all over for pamphlets but can’t find any evidence.
Jessup and his New Underground compatriots knew that this day would come, because their pamphlets threaten the government’s effort to control all media in the U.S. And with the district government headquartered in Fort Beulah, it’s no surprise that the Corpos catch onto them. Fortunately, it isn’t difficult to notice the Corpos’ spies or outsmart Shad Ledue and Emil Staubmeyer. Indeed, the poker scene again shows that fascism’s greatest weakness is its tendency to prioritize loyalty over skill. This is why Windrip consistently hands power to incompetent people like Ledue and Staubmeyer.
Themes
Over the next several days, Doremus Jessup notices the same spy following him, and he tells Truman Webb to stop printing pamphlets for the time being. Jessup struggles to sleep, and for the first time in years, he yearns for Emma. On the Fourth of July, the Jessup family attends the Minute Men’s grand parade. That evening, a huge car drives through the thunderstorm up to the family’s porch. Five Minute Men jump out and enter the house. Their leader, an Ensign, smacks Jessup in the face and arrests him. They tear through his books and find a pamphlet that he has been writing, then drive him to the courthouse, where they stick him in the back of a truck with Buck Titus, Truman Webb, and Dan Wilgus.
Jessup’s freedom finally runs out. It’s significant that he gets arrested on the Fourth of July: this represents how Windrip has turned core American values on their head, all while claiming to keep them alive. For instance, Windrip’s Minute Men parade is supposed to represent freedom and independence, even though the Minute Men are really a force of repression and terror. Unlike in a democracy, where suspects are presumed innocent and supposed to be treated humanely, in Windrip’s U.S., Jessup is presumed guilty, and the Minute Men make a point of treating him as cruelly as possible when they arrest him.
Themes
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The men are all in too much pain to really hold a conversation. After a three-hour ride, they get out at the old Dartmouth campus—the District Three central offices. Jessup remembers that Francis Tasbrough is the Commissioner now, and he briefly feels relieved. The Minute Men lead Jessup to an old classroom, where he immediately falls asleep on a stiff wooden bed. When he wakes up, the Minute Men hand him coffee and bread, then lead him outside and taunt him for being a newspaper editor. One of the Minute Men thinks it’s funny to ask Jessup how he writes, bring over a piece of paper, and stick Jessup’s nose in it.
Jessup knows that the Windrip government runs entirely on arbitrary decisions and personal favors, so he has good reason to hope that his relationship with Tasbrough will save him. Meanwhile, the Minute Men’s strange, childish insults show how they’re brainwashed to think of journalists and publishers as evil enemies of the state—even though the government also relies on them to spread its propaganda.
Themes
The Minute Men throw Jessup into a cell with several other prisoners, including Buck Titus, who has a deep gash on his forehead. For an hour, the cell’s guard whips Jessup whenever he slouches. The Minute Men lead Buck Titus away, and Jessup hears him scream through the wall. Then, it’s Jessup’s turn. He expects to be meeting Frank Tasbrough, but instead, it’s the Ensign who arrested him yesterday. The Ensign declares that Jessup is a communist and sentences him to “twenty-five lashes—and the oil.”
It’s little surprise that the Minute Men freely torture Jessup and the other prisoners. Without any democratic limit on their actions, they only answer to officials like Judge Swan—who are likely to demand more cruelty, not less. Meanwhile, Lewis uses the Ensign’s accusation of communism to show how authoritarianism turns due process into a joke. The reader knows that Jessup hates communism, but the Ensign uses it as a justification for torturing him anyway. Truth, evidence, and testimony no longer matter in Windrip’s legal system: charges and convictions are just formalities that the Minute Men must go through before they impose whatever punishments they want on whomever they want.
Themes
The Minute Men drag Jessup to a foul-smelling basement, pour castor oil down his throat, tear off his clothes, lay him face-down on a bloodstained table, and start to whip him with a metal rod. He falls unconscious, and when he wakes up, he’s lying on the floor, covered in his own diarrhea (from the castor oil). For the next three nights, the Minute Men repeatedly wake him up, demand to know if he’s a communist, and beat him when he says no. By day, the Ensign continues questioning him—he even declares that Buck Titus has confessed everything, but Jessup knows that this is a lie. During his half-hour exercise walks in the yard, Jessup sees Buck Titus and Dan Wilgus (whose nose is crushed, and who looks partially paralyzed). In the morning, the guards tell him that Wilgus has hanged himself.
Sinclair Lewis uses this brutal torture scene to warn his readers about what can happen when a society abandons liberal principles of due process and restraints on the use of force. It’s also a direct reference to Fascist Italy, where castor oil was commonly used in torture and mob violence. The circumstances surrounding Dan Wilgus’s death are intentionally unclear: Lewis lets the reader decide for themselves whether Wilgus really committed suicide, or whether the guards actually beat him to death. Either way, it’s clear that his horrible mistreatment by the Minute Men is responsible for his death—and it’s even clearer that none of them will face any consequences for it.
Themes
Then, Jessup goes to an old English classroom for his trial. The judge isn’t Francis Tasbrough, but Effingham Swan—who is reading the pamphlet Jessup wrote, detailing his crimes. But Francis Tasbrough is present—he testifies that Jessup opposes the government because he’s jealous about not receiving a political office. Shad Ledue testifies that Jessup tried to recruit him into a plot to assassinate Judge Swan. Ultimately, Swan sentences Jessup to a minimum of 17 years in the concentration camp, plus execution if he tries to escape—and 20 more lashes and more castor oil, effective immediately.
Jessup is in his sixties, so 17 years in the camps may amount to a life sentence. Of course, Judge Swan bases this sentence on his personal feud with Jessup and not on any solid evidence that Jessup broke the law. Tasbrough and Ledue’s sham testimonies are neither fact-checked nor relevant to Swan’s decision. Through this decision, Lewis again warns against concentrating so much power in one person’s hands—which is precisely what fascism does by discarding the rule of law.
Themes
