Previous
Philip Jessup
Sissy Jessup is Doremus and Emma Jessup’s youngest daughter. She is in high school at the beginning of the book, as she is just 18 years old—far younger than her siblings Mary (who is 30) and Philip (who is 32). She is incredibly witty, capable, and fearless, but most of the people around her underestimate her. In particular, she merges her father’s moral compass with her younger generation’s progressive values. This is doubly true when it comes to gender and romance. Intellectual Julian Falck and popular Malcolm Tasbrough compete for her heart, but she definitively chooses Falck after Tasbrough becomes a Windrip supporter. After they join the New Underground together, Sissy boldly seduces Shad Ledue in order to obtain inside information about the administration and pass it to the New Underground’s publishers. She ends up exposing the atrocities he commits against the population and his corrupt business dealings (which land him in Trianon concentration camp). After her sister Mary dies, Sissy moves north to work and organize New Underground activities with Lorinda Pike. She and Pike are dear friends, and she even approves of Pike’s affair with her father. Later, she helps her father escape to Canada.
Cecilia “Sissy” Jessup Quotes in It Can’t Happen Here
The It Can’t Happen Here quotes below are all either spoken by Cecilia “Sissy” Jessup or refer to Cecilia “Sissy” Jessup. 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:
Chapter 34
Quotes
She was very sick about his being killed. She was very sick about all killing. She found no heroism but only barbaric bestiality in having to kill so that one might so far live as to be halfway honest and kind and secure. But she knew that she would be willing to do it again.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire It Can’t Happen Here LitChart as a printable PDF.
Cecilia “Sissy” Jessup Quotes in It Can’t Happen Here
The It Can’t Happen Here quotes below are all either spoken by Cecilia “Sissy” Jessup or refer to Cecilia “Sissy” Jessup. 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:
Chapter 34
Quotes
She was very sick about his being killed. She was very sick about all killing. She found no heroism but only barbaric bestiality in having to kill so that one might so far live as to be halfway honest and kind and secure. But she knew that she would be willing to do it again.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
