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
Doremus Jessup packs his things and waits in the hotel lobby until it’s time to leave for his train. A seductive looking woman walks by—it’s Lorinda Pike. She embraces Jessup and gives him some final news before his departure. Buck Titus, Julian Falck, Karl Pascal, and John Pollikop are still alive in the camps, Father Perefixe is running the Fort Beulah New Underground, and Emma and David are happy with Philip in Worcester. Sissy is still working for the New Underground and dreaming of marrying Julian, and Francis Tasbrough is District Commissioner again. His new housekeeper, Mrs. Candy, reports on all his activities to the New Underground.
The novel’s closing chapter begins with Doremus Jessup departing to start his new life as a full-time democracy activist. While the fascist regime hasn’t collapsed yet, it has never looked weaker. In fact, for the first time in many months, Jessup feels like his personal contribution to the struggle can make a pivotal difference. His meeting with Lorinda Pike is primarily a plot device to give the reader a final update about the novel’s other major characters. Many of their fates hang in the balance—ultimately, they will depend on whether Jessup and his movement succeed.
Themes
Lorinda Pike says goodbye, and Doremus Jessup boards his train. He realizes that nobody will be able to contact him, since he won’t have a stable address. In fact, he’s not even Doremus Jessup anymore—his new identity is William Barton Dobbs, a traveling harvesting machinery salesman from Vermont.
To become a New Underground spy, Jessup literally has to sacrifice his identity. This is a metaphor for how fighting for and participating in democracy requires putting the common good before one’s own personal interests.
Themes
Sometime later, Mr. William Barton Dobbs (Doremus Jessup) wakes up in a conservative region of Minnesota that’s still loyal to the Corpos. He eats a hearty breakfast and reads the Corpo propaganda news, which falsely states that Walt Trowbridge is dead and that the U.S. has won another battle in Mexico. A group of Minute Men march past the hotel, timidly singing a war song. They’re embarrassed because they no longer know if the townspeople support them. In fact, Mr. Dobbs and his dozens of New Underground agents have converted many locals to the rebels’ side.
Unlike Sissy and Julian Falck, Jessup isn’t spying on the Corpos and Minute Men. Instead, his job is to help ordinary people truly understand the fascist regime and join the resistance instead. In fact, he’s doing exactly the same thing that he used to do as a newspaper editor: fighting lies with truth in order to improve society. This is also a metaphor for Sinclair Lewis’s own goals in writing this book: he believed that he could help the American public recommit to democracy by showing them the dire consequences of fascism.
Themes
Mr. William Barton Dobbs (Doremus Jessup) drives through the beautiful, vast Minnesota prairie in his Ford convertible until he reaches a slim yellow farmhouse. Upstairs, he meets seven of his agents, and each reports on their activities. One is struggling to convince farm owners that they should pay their workers decent wages, another fights to convince Finnish settlers that Trowbridge isn’t a Soviet-style communist, and a third can’t figure out how to win over “vaguely pro-Nazi” Germans. Jessup offers them all pointed suggestions—for instance, the third agent should tell the Germans that Haik wants to send them all back to Europe. But on the drive to his next stop, Jessup wonders whether it’s really ethical to fight fascism with lies.
Jessup and his agents demonstrate how grassroots activists can launch a democratic revolution from the ground up. Their mission is simple: they must talk to ordinary people about their lives, inform them about the nation’s dire political situation, and seek their voluntary support. Whereas the fascist regime maintains power through coercion and violence, the New Underground’s democratic revolution depends on telling the truth, respecting others, and viewing all people as equals. In fact, this is Lewis’s primary case for democracy: it’s the political system that naturally forms when everyone treats everyone else as equals. Any other system can survive only through injustice and repression. In fact, by encouraging the free and equal exchange of ideas, Jessup and his comrades are actually training people to participate in a democracy, too.
Themes
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Mr. Dobbs spends that night at a rebel couple’s rural cabin. He has his recurring dream about Trianon. In the dream, a soldier lets all the prisoners out of their cells. They assemble outside, where General Coon declares that they are all free, because Haik has been captured. The crowd includes Dan Wilgus, Buck Titus, Julian and the Rev. Mr. Falck, Henry Veeder, John Pollikop, Truman Webb, and even Karl Pascal. Lorinda Pike, Emma, Sissy, Mary, David, Foolish, and Mrs. Candy wait in the distance. Shad Ledue starts to chase them—and then the dream suddenly ends. Jessup’s host wakes him and reports that the Corpos are coming for him. So, Jessup rides away, deep into the woods, toward the sunrise, because “a Doremus Jessup can never die.”
The novel’s conclusion leaves the fate of American democracy uncertain. But Jessup’s dream represents the freedom and safety that he associates with living in a democratic society. Of course, he is dedicating his life to rebuilding this kind of society in the United States—but Lewis’s readers already live in a democracy, and he hopes that his novel will convince them to cherish and defend it. After all, the novel’s final line celebrates democracy’s defenders. By declaring that “a Doremus Jessup can never die,” Lewis insists that people will always rise up against authoritarianism, no matter how severe the cost, and suggests that their contributions to society will live on for generations.
Themes
