Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Plot Against America, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation
Isolationism vs. Solidarity
Historical Fact vs. Emotional Truth
Family and Home
Summary
Analysis
As an older Philip Roth looks back on his childhood, he finds that every memory from his youth is tinged with “perpetual fear.” He wonders if his memories would be less frightening if Lindbergh hadn’t been elected president—or if he himself hadn’t been Jewish. In June of 1940, Charles Lindbergh, America’s “aviation hero,” secures the Republican nomination for the presidency. Philip’s father, Herman, is an insurance salesman, and his mother, Bess, is a homemaker. His older brother, Sandy, is a 12-year-old with a talent for drawing. Philip himself, meanwhile, is a boy of just seven with a stamp-collecting obsession fueled by President Roosevelt’s own love of the hobby.
The opening lines of the novel situate the reader in a fictionalized—but emotionally authentic—version of the writer Philip Roth’s childhood in New Jersey. Philip ties the fear he experienced as a child to the fact that his and his family’s Jewish identities came under attack when he was young, their idyllic American lives interrupted by the looming threat of anti-Semitism.
Themes
The Roths live in a two-family home on a tree-lined street in the Weequahic neighborhood of Newark. Though the Roth’s bustling, firmly middle-class neighborhood is predominantly Jewish, the surrounding neighborhoods are predominantly Gentile, or non-Jewish. Though all of Philip’s schoolmates and neighbors are Jewish, he feels that work unites the neighborhood more than religion does. While Jewish doctors, lawyers, and successful merchants live in other, nicer neighborhoods, the Roths’ neighborhood is defined by hardworking people and small family-owned businesses.
For Philip, his family, and their neighbors, Judaism is part of the fabric of their community. Philip and his family and many of their friends are largely secular Jews, united not so much by tradition or faith as they are by culture, proximity, and shared secular values. This passage shows how even Jews who have largely assimilated into American life already are still seen by Gentiles as other—and they’re ostracized unfairly for their perceived difference.
Themes
The adult Jews in the Roths’ neighborhood are not observant in “outward, recognizable ways”—no one speaks with an Old World accent or wears a long beard, and there is hardly any Hebrew lettering stenciled anywhere beyond the butcher shop, the synagogue, and the cemetery. In 1940, Israel does not exist, and six million Jews have not yet been murdered in the Holocaust. The idea of a Jewish national homeland is a distant one to Philip, who says the pledge of allegiance to the only homeland he has ever known in class every morning. Everything changes, though, when Lindbergh is nominated by the Republicans.
Philip and his family believe in America as their homeland, and while religion is part of their lives, they are insulated from many of the very real threats and violence that Jews living abroad face every day. Roth hints at the false sense of security this way of life has given the Roths and their neighbors, foreshadowing the fact that this peacetime could be disrupted if Lindbergh is elected president.
Themes
Lindbergh is—and has been for over a decade—a hero in Philip’s neighborhood, just as he is everywhere else in the nation. Flying nonstop from Long Island to Paris in his monoplane the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927 catapulted the man to fame. He completed the trip on the same day Bess discovered she was pregnant with Sandy, giving the trip a personal place in the Roth family lore. Sandy was only four in March of 1932 when Lindbergh and his wife, Anne’s, first child was kidnapped and, weeks later, discovered dead in the woods miles from their home. The Lindberghs moved to England in the wake of the tragedy, and Lindbergh began taking trips to Nazi Germany. Lindbergh’s public expressions of admiration for Adolf Hitler turned him into a figure who, by the time Philip began school in 1938, provoked anger in the Roth household.
This passage provides some historical context about Lindbergh’s place in the American cultural imagination circa 1940. Having long been an American aviation hero, Lindbergh’s anti-Semitic tendencies and hobnobbing with Nazis in recent years has transformed him from an figurehead of American industry and intrepidness into a reviled and traitorous puppet figure—at least for Philip and for many Jews across America.
Themes
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1938 was the most terrible year for European Jews in nearly 2 millennia—it was the year of Kristallnacht, the most terrible pogrom (organized massacre) in modern history. 1938 was also the year when Lindbergh refused to return the medal bestowed on him by Air Marshal Göring on behalf of Hitler himself, unwilling to perpetrate an “unnecessary insult” against the Nazis. In 1938, Lindbergh was the first famous American whom Philip learned to hate. Lindbergh’s nomination in 1940 represents one of the only “threats” to Philip’s security as an American he has yet experienced.
The idea that Lindbergh, a Nazi sympathizer who either ignores or endorses the violence perpetrated against the European Jews, could have once been a figure so important and so inspirational to so many Americans demonstrates the profound divide between Gentile consciousness and Jewish consciousness. Jews must often face the destruction of their heroes, who often serve as stark reminders of the ways in which Jews are discounted or actively discriminated against.
Themes
The only other “threat” Philip can recall took place about a year earlier, in 1939, when his father was offered a promotion—and a transfer to an office six miles away in a Gentile neighborhood. Philip’s mother Bess, who grew up in Elizabeth as part of one of the only Jewish families in town, harbored reservations about the move. When Herman took the family on a drive through the neighborhood in an attempt to reassure Bess of its safety, the Roths spotted an outdoor party full of people dressed in lederhosen—Herman declared the party a “fascist” meeting of the German American Bund. The next day, Herman declined the promotion.
This passage provides further context for the persistent difficulties of Jewish life in the early 1940s. A man like Herman, who has never known anything but America, must still contend with the idea that he and his family are ostracized and even hated by large chunks of the population. This consciousness seeps into Herman’s professional life as well, barring him from certain opportunities and dictating the way he lives his life and raises his family.
Themes
In 1939, the Lindberghs moved home to America from Europe and resume life in the public eye. As Hitler’s armies invaded and occupied country after country, Lindbergh, on a public speaking tour, began insisting that America stay out of the war and refuse aid to Britain and France, who had declared war on Germany. As Roosevelt urged Congress to loosen restrictions mandating American neutrality, Lindbergh’s isolationist rhetoric deepened. At a rally in Des Moines, Lindbergh gave a speech declaring that “the Jewish race” was responsible for pushing the country toward war. The next day, the media and the Democratic machine responded with outrage to Lindbergh’s speech, but the America First Committee seized upon Lindbergh as a figurehead of their flourishing movement.
This passage provides authentic, historically-accurate context for Lindbergh’s ascent to power. The things Roth reports Lindbergh having said in this passage are all true, and they provide a worrisome sense of foreshadowing concerning anti-Semitism’s popularity in America in spite of purported American values of equality, tolerance, and acceptance.
Themes
Philip looks back to the night of June 27th, 1940—the night of the Republican Convention. After hours of listening to a deadlocked convention on the radio, Sandy and Philip go to bed. At 3:18 a.m., Lindbergh walks onto the floor of the convention, where he is applauded for 30 minutes and placed in nomination. Early in the morning, before sunrise, the boys are awakened by their neighbors’ chagrined shouts—an isolationist anti-Semite is running for president of the United States. As neighbors mill about in the streets in their pajamas and slippers, Philip and Sandy are shocked by the anger, confusion, and outrage that has swiftly overtaken their neighborhood.
This passage represents the first major break with the historical record in the novel. Lindbergh did not actually secure the Republican nomination in 1940—but as Roth imagines what would have erupted in his childhood hometown if he did, it becomes clear that American Jews at this time are positively stunned by the ability of anti-Semitism and isolationism to prevail over the American values on which they’ve been raised.
Themes
The next day, Philip’s family and neighbors are comforted by Roosevelt’s “robust response” to Lindbergh’s nomination. Roosevelt, who has appointed several Jews to his cabinet and Supreme Court, is a “friend” to the Jews of America. In the days that follow, newspaper headlines are plastered with images of Lindbergh accepting his medal from the Nazis and shaking hands with Hermann Göring.
It's clear that many Americans still oppose Lindbergh and find his support of the Nazi regime mortifying and unacceptable—yet this passage also foreshadows that an anti-Semitic American hero is still, to many people, an American hero first. This demonstrates one example of how Jewish needs and perspectives have been sidelined throughout American history.
Themes
On Sunday night, the Roths and their neighbors wait and listen excitedly by their radios for Walter Winchell’s nine p.m. broadcast. Bolstered by Winchell’s short but boisterous, fearless broadcast—which calls Lindbergh’s candidacy “the greatest threat ever to American democracy”—the Roths and their neighbors pour out into the streets for an impromptu block party. Winchell, a Jewish radio host, is a notorious gossip personality, but his devotion to the truth makes him a figure that the Roths and their neighbors admire. During the party, Philip feels that he and his family are once again Americans simply out for a night of enjoying freedom in the open air.
This passage shows how important Walter Winchell—and, by proxy, Jewish perspective, validation, and solidarity—truly is to Philip’s family and neighbors. As Lindbergh’s campaign threatens to redefine “Americanness,” Americans like Winchell with no patience for anti-Semitism or “America First” rhetoric make Philip’s community feel less afraid.
Themes
Philip’s brother Sandy is a talented young artist known throughout the neighborhood for his ability to draw anyone and anything—he has even won awards in school and from the city for his entries into local art contests, such as an illustration for an Arbor Day poster he based off of one of Philip’s stamps from his stamp collection. Sandy spends all of his allowance money on art supplies which he keeps stored in his and Philip’s closet, while his drawings stay beneath the bed in a black portfolio. Philip is in awe of his talented, inventive, and willful older brother.
This passage demonstrates how both Philip and Sandy have a shared reverence for the images and institutions of American life. They both covet these images—while Philip collects them, Sandy replicates them.
Themes
One day, home alone with Philip, Sandy opens up his portfolio and spreads out on the dining room table several portraits of Lindbergh. It is clear from the loving way Sandy has rendered Lindbergh that he admires the man greatly. As Sandy and Philip look at the drawings, Sandy declares that Lindbergh is going to win the presidency—and that America is going to “go fascist” according to their cousin Alvin, who wants to join the Canadian Army and fight for the British against Hitler. Sandy urges Philip not to tell anyone about the portraits—he has told their parents he tore the drawings up. Philip agrees to keep Sandy’s secret, as he himself is still hanging on to a stamp from 1927 commemorating Lindbergh’s fateful flight.
Philip and Sandy have both been raised to see Lindbergh as a hero and his aviation antics as emblems of American innovation and boundary-breaking. To have such a widely-adored hero shattered and rendered off-limits is hard for the boys, who clearly both still harbor differing degrees of reverence for Lindbergh and all that his achievements represent. This passage foreshadows the dual consciousness the boys inhabit: they know Lindbergh hates Jewish people, yet they cannot divest themselves from conceiving of him as an American hero.
Themes
Philip and his friends have been playing a new game all summer—called “I Declare War,” the game consists of the boys bouncing a rubber ball on a chalk circle divided into pie-like segments, each of which represents a different European country. The game, which the boys play continuously in the streets, agitates and worries their mothers—yet the boys can’t stop playing, since declaring war is now all they think about.
This passage shows how fears of—and excitements surrounding—war has creeped into every facet of Philip and his friends’ lives. As young as they are, they cannot keep fear and anxiety away, so they try to reconfigure those bad feelings into a game that lets them feel in control.
Themes
On the Saturday before Labor Day, Lindbergh officially launches his campaign by flying The Spirit of St. Louis to Los Angeles, where a gleeful crowd awaits him. He announces that he wants to run for president in order to “preserve American democracy,” concluding his speech by stating that Americans have a simple choice to make: a choice between his election and war. Lindbergh embarks on a tour of America in his biplane, spending a day in each of the 48 states over the course of six weeks. At each campaign stop, he repeats his central message: vote for Lindbergh or vote for war.
Lindbergh runs on a purely isolationist platform. While American values are theoretically comprised of solidarity, empathy, and the pursuit of what’s right, Lindbergh’s America First ideology strikes a chord. Lindbergh’s candidacy reveals the self-interested nature of America’s underbelly—an underbelly that would rather turn a blind eye to the suffering of European Jews than risk going to war.
Themes
In October, Lindbergh flies to Newark, where a local rabbi, Lionel Bengelsdorf, is among the those who welcome him. Bengelsdorf is the prominent leader of a local Conservative congregation and is widely regarded as “the religious leader of New Jersey Jewry.” A native of South Carolina whose wife, a wealthy heiress, died in 1936, Bengelsdorf’s sermons are broadcast weekly on the radio to a wide audience. In many of these sermons, Bengelsdorf discusses how developing an American value system should be “the first priority” for American Jews. As Bengelsdorf speaks at the airport, he states that he supports Lindbergh not in spite of his own Jewishness, but because he is an “American Jew.”
This passage introduces Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, one of the novel’s most complex, unknowable characters and one of its primary antagonists. Bengelsdorf’s insistence on assimilation as a “priority” for Jews makes him hated by many. Members of Philip’s family and community see Bengelsdorf’s rhetoric as being designed to please the Gentile establishment—not designed to enhance the education, spiritual life, and well-being of his congregation as a rabbi’s agenda should be. Bengelsdorf shares Lindbergh’s allegiance to America over allegiance to his own people.
Themes
Bengelsdorf participates in another Lindbergh rally at Madison Square Garden several days later. As the Roths listen to the broadcast, Alvin states that Lindbergh has “bought” Bengelsdorf. Herman urges Alvin to give Bengelsdorf a chance. Bengelsdorf goes on to claim that Lindbergh’s visits to Nazi Germany were actually part of his role as “secret adviser to the U.S. government.” Bengelsdorf says that the war in Europe is not America’s war—and that while he is saddened to hear of Jews Germany being persecuted, he is an American first, and he doesn’t want to see American lives lost in a European conflict.
This passage makes even more transparent just how divisive, and in many ways maddening, Bengelsdorf is to the very people he’s supposed to represent. Bengelsdorf’s America First beliefs—whether authentic or, as Alvin suggests, simply a show of fealty toward Lindbergh in pursuit of money or power—are painful for many Jews.
Themes
Rattled by Bengelsdorf’s speech, Bess leaves the room on the verge of tears. Herman begins shouting obscenities about Bengelsdorf and his ridiculous speech. Alvin numbly states that Bengelsdorf is “koshering Lindbergh for the goyim”—in giving Lindbergh a rabbi’s stamp of approval, Alvin believes, Bengelsdorf has just guaranteed his win over Roosevelt.
Alvin rightly predicts that Lindbergh is using Bengelsdorf to send a message to Gentile voters that the Jewish community accepts and supports Lindbergh, too. Bengelsdorf’s purpose is to assuage whatever guilt Gentiles (or, for that matter, Jews) might feel about electing a man with a track record of making anti-Semitic statements.
Themes
That night, Philip wakes up on the floor—he has rolled out of bed for the second time in as many weeks. The first time he rolled out of bed, he couldn’t remember what propelled him there—this time, he realizes that he has rolled out to escape a nightmare. In the dream, Philip recalls taking his stamp album out to bring it over to the house of his friend Earl Axman, an older fifth-grade boy he sometimes compares collections with—Earl has the best stamp collection in town. In the dream, Philip is walking down the street toward Earl’s when he drops his album on the spot where he and his friends often play “I Declare War.” As the album flutters open, Philip realizes that all of his stamps bearing Washington’s face have been replaced with stamps bearing Hitler’s visage—all of his other stamps have been covered in giant swastikas.
Philip’s nightmare speaks to the hidden (and even subconscious) ways in which the rise of anti-Semitism in America is seeping into psyche of Jewish families around the country. Philip fears that the Nazis will succeed in taking over everything. His symbolic dream about the corruption of his stamp collection signals his belief that for all his and his family’s faith in America, they will not be protected when the chips are down.
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