It Can’t Happen Here

It Can’t Happen Here

by

Sinclair Lewis

Lorinda Pike is a spirited young widow who runs the Beulah Valley Tavern near town. While she has a poor reputation in town because of her marital status, she is one of Doremus Jessup and Buck Titus’s best friends. In fact, she’s Jessup’s primary love interest during the entire novel—they carry on a long affair, and they have much more in common than Jessup does with his wife Emma. A staunch liberal and opponent of the Windrip administration, Pike becomes one of the New Underground’s main leaders in Fort Beulah, especially after her business partner, Mr. Nipper, convinces Judge Effingham Swan to sign over total control of the Tavern to him. She moves in with Buck Titus instead, posing as his housekeeper but really spending all of her time leading refugees to Canada and helping Doremus Jessup publish his anti-government pamphlets. However, when she realizes that her affair with Jessup is interfering with her commitment to fighting fascism, she leaves Fort Beulah and moves north to Beecher Falls, where she starts another chapter of the New Underground. She and Sissy eventually help Doremus Jessup escape from the Trianon concentration camp and make it to Canada. Practical, industrious, and firmly committed to saving democracy from tyranny, Lorinda Pike is a model activist.

Lorinda Pike Quotes in It Can’t Happen Here

The It Can’t Happen Here quotes below are all either spoken by Lorinda Pike or refer to Lorinda Pike. 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:
American Fascism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“Well, all the birdies in their nest agree. My friend, Mrs. Pike, ought to know that freedom of speech becomes mere license when it goes so far as to criticize the Army, differ with the D.A.R., and advocate the rights of the Mob. So, Lorinda, I think you ought to apologize to the General, to whom we should be grateful for explaining to us what the ruling classes of the country really want. Come on now, my friend—jump up and make your excuses.”

Related Characters: Doremus Jessup/William Barton Dobbs (speaker), Herbert Y. Edgeways, Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch , Lorinda Pike
Page Number: 9-10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“All this trouble and the Corpos—They’re going to do something to you and me. We’ll become so roused up that—either we’ll be desperate and really cling to each other and everybody else in the world can go to the devil or, what I’m afraid is more likely, we’ll get so deep into rebellion against Windrip, we’ll feel so terribly that we’re standing for something, that we’ll want to give up everything else for it, even give up you and me. So that no one can ever find out and criticize. We’ll have to be beyond criticism.”

“No! I won’t listen. We will fight, but how can we ever get so involved—detached people like us—”

“You are going to publish that editorial tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Related Characters: Doremus Jessup/William Barton Dobbs (speaker), Lorinda Pike (speaker), Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, Dr. Hector Macgoblin, Willy Schmidt, Rabbi Vincent de Verez
Related Symbols: The Fort Beulah Daily Informer
Page Number: 179-180
Explanation and Analysis:
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: Doremus Jessup/William Barton Dobbs, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, Cecilia “Sissy” Jessup, Lorinda Pike, Buck Titus
Page Number: 260
Explanation and Analysis:
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Lorinda Pike Quotes in It Can’t Happen Here

The It Can’t Happen Here quotes below are all either spoken by Lorinda Pike or refer to Lorinda Pike. 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:
American Fascism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“Well, all the birdies in their nest agree. My friend, Mrs. Pike, ought to know that freedom of speech becomes mere license when it goes so far as to criticize the Army, differ with the D.A.R., and advocate the rights of the Mob. So, Lorinda, I think you ought to apologize to the General, to whom we should be grateful for explaining to us what the ruling classes of the country really want. Come on now, my friend—jump up and make your excuses.”

Related Characters: Doremus Jessup/William Barton Dobbs (speaker), Herbert Y. Edgeways, Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch , Lorinda Pike
Page Number: 9-10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“All this trouble and the Corpos—They’re going to do something to you and me. We’ll become so roused up that—either we’ll be desperate and really cling to each other and everybody else in the world can go to the devil or, what I’m afraid is more likely, we’ll get so deep into rebellion against Windrip, we’ll feel so terribly that we’re standing for something, that we’ll want to give up everything else for it, even give up you and me. So that no one can ever find out and criticize. We’ll have to be beyond criticism.”

“No! I won’t listen. We will fight, but how can we ever get so involved—detached people like us—”

“You are going to publish that editorial tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Related Characters: Doremus Jessup/William Barton Dobbs (speaker), Lorinda Pike (speaker), Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, Dr. Hector Macgoblin, Willy Schmidt, Rabbi Vincent de Verez
Related Symbols: The Fort Beulah Daily Informer
Page Number: 179-180
Explanation and Analysis:
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: Doremus Jessup/William Barton Dobbs, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, Cecilia “Sissy” Jessup, Lorinda Pike, Buck Titus
Page Number: 260
Explanation and Analysis: