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Dr. Marcus Olmsted
Karl Pascal is a communist mechanic and labor union organizer who works at John Pollikop’s garage. Pollikop and Pascal constantly debate whether socialism or communism will solve the world’s woes. Pascal also frequently tries to convince Doremus Jessup to join the Communist Party. However, Jessup generally refuses—he believes that Pascal’s faith in the Communists is just as irrational and dangerous as the American public’s faith in Windrip. (The one time Jessup does meet with the Party, they realize that he’s a liberal and reject him.) At the beginning of the novel, Pascal already knows Jessup from his time organizing a strike at Francis Tasbrough’s quarry, but they truly become close friends as cellmates in the Trianon camp. By collecting compromising information about the guards, Pascal ensures that they treat him well rather than torture and abuse him. Nevertheless, he still grows more and more radical during his time in the camps, to the point of advocating for a Communist dictatorship. Sinclair Lewis uses Pascal to argue that anyone can end up supporting tyranny if they let loyalty and blind faith guide their political decisions. Pascal is still in the camps when Jessup escapes at the end of the novel.
Karl Pascal Quotes in It Can’t Happen Here
The It Can’t Happen Here quotes below are all either spoken by Karl Pascal or refer to Karl Pascal. 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:
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Chapter 36
Quotes
[Doremus Jessup] saw now that he must remain alone, a “Liberal,” scorned by all the noisier prophets for refusing to be a willing cat for the busy monkeys of either side. But at worst, the Liberals, the Tolerant, might in the long run preserve some of the arts of civilization, no matter which brand of tyranny should finally dominate the world.
“More and more, as I think about history,” he pondered, “I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.”
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Karl Pascal Quotes in It Can’t Happen Here
The It Can’t Happen Here quotes below are all either spoken by Karl Pascal or refer to Karl Pascal. 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 36
Quotes
[Doremus Jessup] saw now that he must remain alone, a “Liberal,” scorned by all the noisier prophets for refusing to be a willing cat for the busy monkeys of either side. But at worst, the Liberals, the Tolerant, might in the long run preserve some of the arts of civilization, no matter which brand of tyranny should finally dominate the world.
“More and more, as I think about history,” he pondered, “I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
