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Chapter 5
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
In the chapter’s epigraph from Zero Hour, Buzz Windrip says he’d choose “a wild-eyed anarchist” over an elite politician, any day, because he wants to fight “Poverty and Intolerance.” Then, the chapter begins by noting that Doremus Jessup’s family worries about his health, but that he sees himself as strong and resilient. His greatest pleasures in life are secretly drinking, smoking, and staying up late. Normally, he’s never grumpy, except before his morning coffee—but now, after Prang has endorsed Windrip, Jessup is speechless and worried in the mornings, which worries Emma.
This chapter’s epigraph is ironic because Windrip is exactly the kind of elite politician he decries—he’s just pretending to be a common man. In contrast, Doremus Jessup does not even pretend to be a common man, but he actually cares far more about fighting “Poverty and Intolerance” than Windrip does. Sixty-year-old Jessup’s daily routine is dull but satisfying—until he realizes that Windrip is likely to win and starts worrying about the future.
Themes
While the townspeople have long seen him as a radical left-winger, Jessup is really just “a mild, rather indolent and somewhat sentimental Liberal” who mistrusts theatrical and contemptuous politicians. For instance, when he wrote in his paper that life in Soviet Russia might not be so bad for common people, he caused a public outcry and lost a third of his readers. But he doesn’t believe in Russian socialism—he loves American free speech and privacy rights, and the Communists he has met are Puritanical fanatics.
Jessup is no political radical, but two things make his political beliefs radically different from other Americans’. First, he takes all viewpoints seriously, including unpopular ones that most Americans would reject out of hand. And second, because he always thinks that he can learn more, he refuses to become a fanatic: he never claims to have the perfect solution or demands that his ideas get implemented, no matter what the cost. Clearly, though, his readers are fanatics: their reaction to his editorial shows that they have already made up their mind about Russian socialism, despite not knowing the first thing about it. In turn, this shows that tyrants like Windrip don’t suddenly turn a peaceful, liberal society into a totalitarian nightmare—instead, they harness existing fears and prejudices in order to convince the public that victory is more important than democracy.
Themes
Jessup’s only real political activism was supporting the union’s strike against Frank Tasbrough’s quarry company. Tasbrough and his friends still resent Jessup for this, and Jessup is still friends with the Communist strike leader, Karl Pascal, and his Socialist friend and coworker John Pollikop. If it weren’t for his wealthy ancestors, Jessup realizes, he would probably be one of Prang’s “Dispossessed.” Emma still doesn’t understand him, but he tolerates her complaints.
Again, Jessup’s willingness to stand up for his principles sets him apart from most of his community. Whereas people like Tasbrough only care about their own status, Jessup empathizes with the quarry workers because he recognizes that his own socioeconomic status was largely an accident and could have been completely different. In fact, he also empathizes with Prang’s “Dispossessed”—he understands the problems they face but thinks that Prang and Windrip are manipulating them into supporting the wrong solutions.
Themes
