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Francis Tasbrough
James Buck Titus, Doremus Jessup’s closest friend, is a tough, worldly 50-year-old farmer from Fort Beulah who spent several years as a cattle-rancher, prospector, and horse-breeder in Montana. During the Windrip administration, Titus runs the Fort Beulah New Underground out of his farmhouse. Titus’s deep knowledge of history and philosophy, wide network of acquaintances, and fearless frontier spirit make him a particularly effective organizer. For instance, Titus is the one who warns Jessup about the government’s plans to arrest him and helps his family make an escape attempt to Canada. Later, Titus ends up in the Trianon camp, but he never loses his optimism or sense of humor, even when the Minute Men brutally torture him. He embodies what Sinclair Lewis sees as the best dimensions of American identity and culture, and his steady commitment to the New Underground shows how organized political resistance should give people hope even in the darkest political situations.
Buck Titus Quotes in It Can’t Happen Here
The It Can’t Happen Here quotes below are all either spoken by Buck Titus or refer to Buck Titus. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 26
Quotes
Doremus discovered that neither he nor any other small citizen had been hearing one hundredth of what was going on in America. Windrip & Co. had, like Hitler and Mussolini, discovered that a modern state can, by the triple process of controlling every item in the press, breaking up at the start any association which might become dangerous, and keeping all the machine guns, artillery, armored automobiles, and aeroplanes in the hands of the government, dominate the complex contemporary population better than had ever been done in medieval days, when rebellious peasantry were armed only with pitchforks and good-will, but the State was not armed much better.
Dreadful, incredible information came in to Doremus, until he saw that his own life, and Sissy’s and Lorinda’s and Buck’s, were unimportant accidents.
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Buck Titus Quotes in It Can’t Happen Here
The It Can’t Happen Here quotes below are all either spoken by Buck Titus or refer to Buck Titus. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 26
Quotes
Doremus discovered that neither he nor any other small citizen had been hearing one hundredth of what was going on in America. Windrip & Co. had, like Hitler and Mussolini, discovered that a modern state can, by the triple process of controlling every item in the press, breaking up at the start any association which might become dangerous, and keeping all the machine guns, artillery, armored automobiles, and aeroplanes in the hands of the government, dominate the complex contemporary population better than had ever been done in medieval days, when rebellious peasantry were armed only with pitchforks and good-will, but the State was not armed much better.
Dreadful, incredible information came in to Doremus, until he saw that his own life, and Sissy’s and Lorinda’s and Buck’s, were unimportant accidents.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
