Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Flivver King, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Capitalism and Dehumanization
American Idealism and Disillusionment
Misinformation, Media Bias, and Ignorance
Individualism vs. Unionization
Technology and Progress
Summary
Analysis
Ford wonders how to stave off communists and Jews. He looks to Germany, where Nazism and fascism are becoming popular movements, and where the German government is reprinting Ford’s anti-Jewish pamphlets. Hitler’s organizer in America, Fritz Kuhn, meets with Ford and explains that they need a “pure, native, hundred percent American movement” to get the communists out of the White House. He tells Ford that all he needs to make this happen is money, and if he gives the one percent of his fortune, they can elect one of their agents as the President of the United States. Ford agrees.
Ford’s involvement with the Nazis continues to illustrate the severe consequences of misinformation and ignorance. Because Ford was convinced by anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the Nazis now use Ford’s own writings in order to convince the German people of Nazi ideology. This also demonstrates how Ford has completely forgone American idealism and his morality, as he is teaming up with a party that will soon become synonymous with inhumanity as well as America’s political enemy.
Themes
