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
In Montreal, Doremus Jessup’s beard grows back, and he gets used to life as a free man. He quickly befriends the rightful president, Perley Beecroft, and the communist “Mr. Cailey,” Joe Elphrey, who was kicked out of the Party for collaborating with socialists and Democrats. Elphrey declares that the masses’ real representatives should set up their own dictatorship, and Beecroft hopes for the U.S. political system to just revert to the turn of the century. But Jessup is simply grateful to be able to speak his mind in public again. He hopes that the next U.S. government won’t just shamelessly serve big business. In fact, Walt Trowbridge just sent away a major oil magnate because he now believes that the state must serve everybody.
For Doremus Jessup, going from the fascist U.S. to democratic Canada is like traveling back in time: he suddenly gets back the freedom and peace of mind that Windrip’s administration stole from him. Of course, Lewis uses this scene to show his readers how pleasant it truly is to live in a free democracy, as compared to a fascist autocracy. This is doubly true for intellectuals like Jessup, whose profession depends on the freedom to publish ideas. Lewis knew that as he wrote this book in 1936, many Americans had never known anything besides democracy, and so they were willing to embrace fascism or communism.
Themes
Despite his newfound freedom, Doremus Jessup intensely misses his family. His Canadian hosts aren’t interested in his stories about escaping the camps—they’ve heard thousands already, and the country is already saturated with American refugees seeking jobs. Thus, Jessup spends his time crowded around café tables with other American exiles, sharing dubious stories, reading the news, and dreaming of returning home. By day, he continues writing “packages of literary dynamite” for the New Underground. He requests a position as a secret agent in the American West, but Beecroft thinks he’s too old, and it’s too dangerous.
While he deeply appreciates Canada’s liberal democracy, Jessup is still thinking mainly about his own country, the United States. He refuses to simply give up on the New Underground’s struggle, just because he’s managed to escape. Actually, just the opposite is true: Jessup’s imprisonment and escape have made him all the more dedicated to fighting fascism. He plays a crucial role publishing pro-democracy propaganda for the New Underground—in fact, his friendships with Perley Beecroft and Walt Trowbridge show how even ordinary people from small towns like Fort Beulah can play a key role in the nation’s fight for democracy.
Themes
By mid-1939, Corpo newspapers are full of staged reports about Mexican raiders attacking U.S. towns. The whole U.S. starts to mobilize for war, including by drafting five million young men into the military. Doremus Jessup and Joe Elphrey consider this ridiculous. But they feel the same way about all wars—except the new rebellion against the Corpos, which is taking over virtually all the territory north and west of Cincinnati. Most of the rebels originally supported Windrip but soon realized that he was handing power and wealth not to the people, but to a few criminal businessmen.
The government sends countless young Americans to their deaths and uses propaganda to justify it. This dystopian situation leads Jessup to question his staunch pacifism—he finally considers whether violence might be justified to overthrow fascism. While he still rejects violence on principle, he also understands that fascists are willing to use extreme violence to preserve their power, which makes it difficult to overthrow them without using force. Yet Jessup understands that it’s hypocritical to reject all wars except the one he happens to believe in—after all, fascists say exactly the same thing about their own wars. To make sense of this contradiction, Lewis must either show that activists can overthrow fascism without violence or show that a pro-democracy revolution is somehow more legitimate than a fascist or communist one. But the latter is difficult, because fascists and communists also always claim to be acting in the people’s interests.
Themes
The rebellion starts small, but in August, General Emmanuel Coon joins, declares Walt Trowbridge president, and establishes an official headquarters at Fort Snelling in Minnesota. Much of the army defects to join Coon, and they win a few battles before the revolt runs out of steam. It fails because Americans aren’t educated enough to decide what they really want out of politics, besides more money for themselves. Without “a clear, sure theory of self-government,” the rebels neither gain nor lose any more territory. So, in October, Walt Trowbridge sends Doremus Jessup to Minnesota as a spy for the New Underground.
Countless Americans finally understand the fascist government’s lies and atrocities clearly enough to take up arms against it. Yet the nation doesn’t simply fall into another civil war, in which the victorious side gets to implement its system of government. Instead, Lewis shows that the nation’s future depends on persuasion—if the rebels want their democracy back, they must make the American people believe in democracy (or “self-government”). Thus, Lewis concludes that a democratic revolution is different from (and superior to) an authoritarian one because it tries to seize power through the pen, not the sword. While an authoritarian revolution tries to seize power by directly overthrowing the government, regardless of what the public thinks, a democratic one builds power by building popular support. A successful democratic revolution doesn’t need to use violence because it grows large enough to outnumber—or even win over—tyranny. Fortunately, political persuasion is what intellectuals like Doremus Jessup do best, and this explains why Lewis chose to make Jessup the hero of his novel.
Themes
Get the entire It Can’t Happen Here LitChart as a printable PDF.
