Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation
At the heart of The Plot Against America is an exploration of what it means to identify not just as a Jew, but as an American Jew. In Philip Roth’s auto-fictional alternate history, America elects the aviation-hero-cum-Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh as president in November of 1940, unseating Franklin Delano Roosevelt and installing an isolationist, anti-Semitic government in the White House. Over the years that follow, the young Philip and his family watch helplessly as anti-Semitism takes…
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Isolationism vs. Solidarity
When Charles Lindbergh takes the presidency as a Republican candidate in Philip Roth’s fictionalized version of the 1940 U.S. election, he runs on an anti-war, “America First” platform, determined to make sure that America stays out of World War II and to keep American lives from being lost in what Lindbergh claims to see as a European squabble. Seen as a staunch defender of American lives, Lindbergh’s popularity soars—yet his isolationist policies, his diplomatic meetings…
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Historical Fact vs. Emotional Truth
Philip Roth himself has declared that he wanted to write The Plot Against America to explore a series of “what-ifs”—and to get to the bottom of what horrors could be possible in a version of America that became openly hostile to Jews at the modern pinnacle of Jewish suffering around the world. Roth creates an alternate history—one in which Charles Lindbergh, who may or may not be a puppet of the Third Reich, is…
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Family and Home
Philip Roth chose to set The Plot Against America in his hometown of Newark—and to use the real names and, to some extent, biographies of his family members as he drew the characters who would populate the novel, installing a younger version of himself as the book’s narrator and protagonist. In doing so, Roth examines an environment he knows intimately as he shows how the Roth family navigates a time of great social, political, and…
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