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
Most of the Fort Beulah New Underground has either gone to Trianon or quit out of fear. Mary Greenhill now leads it, and just Sissy, Father Perefixe, Dr. Olmsted, and a few others remain. They do what little they can, mostly by helping refugees. But Mary wants to do much more. Before Shad Ledue goes to Trianon, she makes plans to assassinate him—and then decides to kill Effingham Swan instead. She visits the camps and asks Doremus and Buck Titus to promise to care for David, in case anything happens to her. Then, she withdraws all of her money, writes up a will, says goodbye to her family, and moves to Albany, the provincial capital.
The Trianon prisoners have gotten their revenge—and now, it’s Mary Greenhill’s turn to avenge her husband, Fowler’s, murder. More than any other character in the novel, she’s willing to die for the New Underground’s cause. (Her financial preparations indicate that she knows she’s not coming back.) Indeed, just like Snake Tizra’s tenure at Trianon, Mary’s radicalization shows how violence tends to invite further violence in response. This creates an escalating cycle that inevitably ends in tragedy.
Themes
In Albany, Mary Greenhill joins the new Women’s Flying Corps. She’s already an expert driver and mechanic, so she becomes a successful pilot in no time. She also succeeds in her bombing classes and takes a special interest in grenades. She takes her sixth solo flight in November, on a morning when Effingham Swan happens to be boarding his official plane to fly down to Washington and meet Windrip. Over the radio, Mary jokes with the ground crew about someone blowing up Swan and Windrip. She flies over Swan’s plane, throws three grenades at him, and misses three times. Swan’s plane starts descending to land. Mary nosedives her plane at Swan’s and crashes into it. They both die instantly.
Committed pacifists like Doremus Jessup wouldn’t appreciate Mary’s tactics, but readers might feel a sense of relief and catharsis at Judge Swan’s death. But Lewis also uses it as a warning: he wants to show his readers how easy it can become to endorse political violence. In fact, the sense of righteous anger that drives Mary to kill Swan is the same feeling that drives people to attack marginalized groups in the name of fascism. Of course, there is a clear difference between Judge Swan’s crimes and Mary Greenhill’s response to them—most importantly, Mary knows that she has no way to get justice besides violence. Still, Lewis wants his readers to know that anyone—including they themselves—could easily start down the perilous road to accepting political violence and fascism.
Themes
