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
The respected journalist, diplomat, and anthropologist Dr. Lionel Adams is touring the country, asking his fellow Black people to be patient and realistic with the new administration (which has re-enslaved them). Shad Ledue attends one of Adams’s lectures as the official government censor—but he hates Adams’s proper accent and tuxedo, so he arrests Adams on the spot and sends him to Trianon. Ensign Stoyt throws Adams in Doremus Jessup and Karl Pascal’s cell—until Adams gets too friendly with them, and Stoyt moves him to solitary confinement.
Dr. Lionel Adams, the novel’s only Black character, will strangely never appear again. He is a stand-in for real-life assimilationist leaders like Booker T. Washington, and Lewis uses his imprisonment to suggest that it’s futile for minority groups to try and negotiate with fascists, whose entire political ideology revolves around racial and national hierarchy. Modern readers may wonder why It Can’t Happen Here focuses almost entirely on white characters, especially if minority groups experience the worst treatment under Windrip’s administration. One explanation for this choice might be Lewis’s own blind spots or his concern about racist readers. But another is that Lewis omits non-white Americans in order to point out how much of fascism’s worst violence is invisible to average citizens. Historically in the U.S., the white majority has endorsed horrible atrocities against non-white minority groups.
Themes
In late November, Shad Ledue gets locked up in Trianon. The other prisoners are surprised—they speculate that Ledue wasn’t sharing enough graft money with Francis Tasbrough. But mostly, they plan to kill him. But, like all the other government officials imprisoned in the camp, Ledue has a special private cell and doesn’t mix with the general population. Doremus Jessup tries to convince the others to spare Ledue—he thinks that, rather than helping topple the regime, assassinating Ledue will only invite retaliation. But his cellmates—now Karl Pascal, John Pollikop, Truman Webb, a surgeon, and a carpenter—have already made up their minds. During exercise hour, the prisoners gather around Shad Ledue’s room, light a wad of trash on fire, and throw it inside. The cell erupts into flame, and Ledue burns to death.
Shad Ledue’s unexpected imprisonment again shows that not even government bureaucrats are safe under fascism, which gives them broad discretion and strong incentives to sabotage one another. Of course, Ledue’s imprisonment also gives his victims an opportunity for revenge. Just like he callously imprisoned them for whatever reason he wished, they callously end his life without ever learning why he ended up in the camps. (The reader will not learn either, for several chapters.) Yet murder is far from an ideal way to win justice, even if it may have been the prisoners’ only option under Windrip’s fascist government.
Themes
After Shad Ledue’s death, the Corpos fire Captain Cowlick and replace him with Snake Tizra, who immediately offers to pardon anyone who will give away Ledue’s killer. Of course, the other inmates promise to kill anyone who offers this information. Doremus Jessup concludes that his prediction was right: killing Ledue did more harm than good. Effingham Swan leads an inquiry into Ledue’s death and decides to randomly execute 10 of the 200 prisoners—including Victor Loveland—and step up punishments for everyone else. In December, Tizra bans visitors and letters, and he starts isolating new prisoners from the general population. Everyone wonders whether this is a punishment or an attempt to keep out important news.
The Corpos can always find more violent people to do their bidding. The prisoners kill Ledue, and then they have to deal with his sadistic friend Snake Tizra instead. With this twist, Lewis suggests that fascists can always find an infinite supply of selfish, obedient lackeys willing to commit an infinite amount of violence. The problem with fascism is the political structure itself, and not just the individuals who commit atrocities within it. This is why killing Ledue backfires, and why Jessup firmly believes in attacking fascism through nonviolent political activism. The alternative is to violently attack the people who happen to be running the fascist government. But doing this just means inviting a new, more vengeful cohort to replace them.
Themes
