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 1936 national party conventions are in six weeks. The Republican candidate will probably be the unassuming senator Walt Trowbridge, and the firebrand Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip is sure to win the Democratic nomination. The crafty, sociable Windrip grew up in a small Western town and now runs his home state like a tyrant. He installed an obedient fool as governor and spent millions building roads, supporting farmers, and expanding the state’s militia. When the state prosecutor charged Windrip with corruption, the militia saved him by occupying the state capitol building.
This description clearly links Windrip to Huey Long, whose political career was nearly identical. Windrip’s actions as senator show that he uses popular public investments to win support, while building up a private army and seriously weakening democratic checks and balances in order to give himself more power. While he claimed to be supporting the people, then, his corruption charges suggest that he really only cared about his own self-interest. Needless to say, he will likely run the whole country the same way if he wins the presidency.
Themes
After six years in the Senate, Windrip decided to run for president. He is promising a guaranteed income to every American, and he has fervent support from prominent clergymen. The mastermind behind his campaign is Lee Sarason, his secretary and a former newspaper editor. Nobody knows where the droopy-faced Sarason came from, what he has done in his life, or what he truly believes. They do know that he’s an extreme sadist, an expert journalist, and far more powerful than an ordinary congressional secretary. He’s just 41, but Windrip is only 48.
Huey Long’s signature policy proposal was also a guaranteed income, so Lewis’s Depression-era readers would have immediately recognized Windrip as his stand-in. Meanwhile, Lee Sarason’s backroom dealings clearly suggest that Windrip’s public statements don’t reflect his real interests or intentions. Sarason’s journalistic career is a minor detail, but it’s an extremely important one because it presents Sarason, who uses journalism for evil, as a character foil for Doremus Jessup, who uses journalism for good.
Themes
Windrip has already published a popular book, Zero Hour—Over the Top, which Sarason actually wrote. It mixes biography and politics—in one well-known passage, it uses Windrip’s childhood suspenders as a metaphor for the dishonesty in Marxist economics and the beauty of Fascism. Within a few sentences, the book calls for war with Japan and rewriting the Constitution to eliminate the checks and balances on presidential power.
Windrip’s book contains no evidence or argumentation—instead, it seeks to win over readers by entertaining them. Specifically, it links Windrip’s charismatic personality with memorable anecdotes and appeals to emotion. Thus, readers end up supporting Windrip’s program because they like and trust him, not because he helps them truly analyze the problems the nation faces. Of course, Windrip’s influential book is also significant because it shows how literature can shape public opinion—which is exactly what Lewis hoped to do with this novel.
Themes
Meanwhile, the nation’s most popular political figure is Reverend Paul Peter Prang from Indiana. Millions of people listen to his weekly radio show, which is modeled after the famous radio priest Father Charles Coughlin—who learned to mass-produce culture just like Henry Ford mass-produced cars. Prang is fickler and more emotional than Coughlin, and he shapes public opinion more than anyone else in the nation. Like every other major political figure, Prang is calling for nationalizing major industries and increasing wages—so it’s difficult to know what he really wants.
The fictional Paul Peter Prang and his real-life counterpart Charles Coughlin show how mass media can function as a ready-made propaganda tool. Books and newspapers could reach a wide, educated audience, but they were no match for the radio, which could instantly reach millions of people around the country (or world). Like Windrip, Prang merges politics with entertainment: he uses vague but popular ideas to manipulate his audience, while hiding his real motivations.
Themes
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But Prang does profit handsomely from his followers, who pay a high price to attend his talks and join his organization, the “League of Forgotten Men.” He controls the group entirely, and he clearly wants to become the nation’s “Priest-King,” which is why Doremus Jessup considers him “a real Fascist menace.” Compared to Prang and Windrip, the likely Republican candidate and honest political realist Walt Trowbridge looks boring and uninspiring.
Just like Windrip, Prang is really motivated by self-interest, and his political grievances are just a ploy to gain power, wealth, and status. These grievances depend on turning democracy on its head. Prang encourages millions of people who are suffering in the Great Depression to view themselves as “Forgotten Men” who have been excluded from American democracy. Then, he tells these “Forgotten Men” that their survival depends on electing an anti-democratic leader, like Buzz Windrip, who will defend their interests. In a nutshell, Prang tells his followers that democracy has failed them, and so their self-preservation requires destroying democracy and handing absolute power to a dictator.
Themes
