The Plot Against America

by

Philip Roth

Charles Lindbergh Character Analysis

Lindbergh is was a real-life American aviation hero who catapulted to fame in 1927 when he piloted his plane from New York to Paris in under 36 hours, completing the first nonstop transatlantic solo flight. Charles and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s, lives were marked by tragedy when their son Charles Jr. was kidnapped in 1932 and later found dead on the side of a highway in what many believed to be a ransoming gone wrong. The Lindberghs left America and lived in Europe for many years. In 1939, as Hitler invaded Poland and rose to power in Europe, the United States called upon Lindbergh to visit Germany and report on Nazi aircraft development. While there, Lindbergh wrote of his admiration of Hitler and even accepted a medal from Hermann Göring. Lindbergh was an anti-Semitic white supremacist who warned against “dilution by foreign races” as well “Jewish influence” in America. For all this, Lindbergh became increasingly popular among white supremacist, America First groups—and this, for author Philip Roth, is where history splits. In The Plot Against America, Lindbergh runs for president against FDR in 1940 and wins by a landslide. With Lindbergh in charge, life becomes much harder for American Jews, who are suddenly subject to programs mainstreamed by Lindbergh’s Office of American Absorption (OAA). As anti-Semitic language and violence across America rises to the surface in frightening ways, families like the Roths feel the effects of Lindbergh’s dangerous tenure in the White House acutely. Ultimately, Lindbergh disappears mid-flight in 1942, the wreckage of his plane having mysteriously vanished. He is never seen again. Philip’s Aunt Evelyn and Rabbi Bengelsdorf publish accounts of a plot against America in which the Nazis, who were behind Charles Jr.’s kidnapping all along, raised the child in Berlin and used him as blackmail in order to install a president who would do the bidding of the Third Reich, ultimately eliminating the “Jewish question” in America. Lindbergh looms over much of the novel, representing the physical ideal of American skill and enterprise while embodying the most “un-American” values of all, according to Herman Roth: prejudice, isolationism, and a profound lack of solidarity.

Charles Lindbergh Quotes in The Plot Against America

The The Plot Against America quotes below are all either spoken by Charles Lindbergh or refer to Charles Lindbergh. 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:
Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“Alvin’s going to go to Canada and join the Canadian army,” he said. “He’s going to fight for the British against Hitler.”

“But nobody can beat Roosevelt,” I said.

“Lindbergh’s going to. America’s going to go fascist.”

Then we just stood there together under the intimidating spell of the three portraits [of Lindbergh.]

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Sanford “Sandy” Roth (speaker), Alvin Roth, Charles Lindbergh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), Adolf Hitler
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

“I am here,” Rabbi Bengelsdorf [said,] “to crush all doubt of the unadulterated loyalty of the American Jews to the United States of America. […] America is our beloved homeland. America is our only homeland. Our religion is independent of any piece of land other than this great country, to which, now as always, we commit our total devotion and allegiance as the proudest of citizens. I want Charles Lindbergh to be my president not in spite of my being a Jew but because I am a Jew—an American Jew.”

Related Characters: Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (speaker), Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 35-36
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

We had driven right to the very heart of American history, and whether we knew it in so many words, it was American history, delineated in its most inspirational form, that we were counting on to protect us against Lindbergh.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Herman Roth, Bess Roth, Sanford “Sandy” Roth, Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:

It was from there that we heard him refer to my father as “a loudmouth Jew,” followed a moment later by the elderly lady declaring, “I’d give anything to slap his face.”

Mr. Taylor led us quickly away to a smaller hall just off the main chamber where there was a tablet inscribed with the Gettysburg Address and a mural whose theme was the Emancipation.

“To hear words like that in a place like this,” said my father, his choked voice quivering with indignation. “In a shrine to a man like this!”

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Herman Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh, Mr. Taylor
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

“An independent destiny for America”—that was the phrase Lindbergh repeated some fifteen times in his State of the Union speech and again at the close of his address on the night of June 22. When I asked my father to explain what the words meant […] he frowned and said, “It means turning our back on our friends. It means making friends with their enemies. You know what it means, son? It means destroying everything that America stands for.”

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Herman Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 84
Explanation and Analysis:

“The Jews of America […] are unlike any other community of Jews in the history of the world. […] The Jews of America can participate fully in the national life of their country. They need no longer dwell apart, a pariah community separated from the rest.”

Related Characters: Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (speaker), Philip Roth, Aunt Evelyn, Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 106-107
Explanation and Analysis:

We never followed anybody we thought was Jewish. They didn’t interest us. Our curiosity was directed at men, the adult Christian men who worked all day in downtown Newark. Where did they go when they went home?

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh, Earl Axman
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“Alvin can’t bear your president,” my father replied, “that’s why he went to Canada. Not so long ago you couldn’t bear the man either. But now this anti-Semite is your friend. The Depression is over, all you rich Jews tell me, and thanks not to Roosevelt but to Mr. Lindbergh. The stock market is up, profits are up, business is booming—and why? Because we have Lindbergh’s peace instead of Roosevelt’s war.”

Related Characters: Herman Roth (speaker), Alvin Roth (speaker), Uncle Monty (speaker), Philip Roth, Bess Roth, Aunt Evelyn, Charles Lindbergh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)
Page Number: 124
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

My brother had discovered in himself the uncommon gift to be somebody, and so while making speeches praising President Lindbergh and while exhibiting his drawings of him and while publicly extolling (in words written by Aunt Evelyn) the enriching benefits of his eight weeks as a Jewish farm hand in the Gentile heartland—while doing, if the truth be known, what I wouldn’t have minded doing myself, by doing what was normal and patriotic all over America and aberrant and freakish only in his home—Sandy was having the time of his life.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Sanford “Sandy” Roth, Aunt Evelyn, Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

“I am not running away!” he shouted, startling everyone. “This is our country!” “No, my mother said sadly, “not anymore. It’s Lindbergh’s. It’s the goyim’s. It’s their country,” she said, and her breaking voice and the shocking words and the nightmare immediacy of what was mercilessly real forced my father […] to see himself with mortifying clarity: a devoted father of titanic energy no more capable of protecting his family from harm than was Mr. Wishnow hanging dead in the closet.

Related Characters: Herman Roth (speaker), Bess Roth (speaker), Philip Roth, Charles Lindbergh, Mr. Wishnow
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Of course, that no Jew could ever be elected to the presidency—least of all a Jew with a mouth as unstoppable as Winchell’s—even a kid as young as I was already accepted, as if the proscription were laid out in so many words in the U.S. Constitution. Yet not even that ironclad certainty could stop the adults from abandoning common sense and, for a night or two, imagining themselves and their children as native-born citizens of Paradise.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh, Walter Winchell
Page Number: 244-245
Explanation and Analysis:

“Well, like it or not, Lindbergh is teaching us what it is to be Jews.” Then she added, “We only think we’re Americans.” “Nonsense. No!” my father replied. “They think we only think we’re Americans. It is not up for discussion, Bess. It is not up for negotiation. These people are not understanding that I take this for granted, goddamnit! Others? He dares to call us others? He’s the other. The one who looks most American—and he’s the one who is least American!”

Related Characters: Herman Roth (speaker), Bess Roth (speaker), Philip Roth, Alvin Roth, Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 255-256
Explanation and Analysis:

A previously unpublicized section of the homesteading plan called the Good Neighbor Project [was] designed to introduce a steadily increasing number of non-Jewish residents into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and in this way “enrich” the “Americanness” of everyone involved. […] The underlying goal of the Good Neighbor Project like that of Just Folks, was to weaken the solidarity of the Jewish social structure as well as to diminish whatever electoral strength a Jewish community might have in local and congressional elections.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 280-281
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

This was how Seldon came to live with us. After their safe return to Newark from Kentucky, Sandy moved into the sun parlor and Seldon took over where Alvin and Aunt Evelyn had left off—as the person in the twin bed next to mine shattered by the malicious indignities of Lindbergh’s America. There was no stump for me to care for this time. The boy himself was the stump, and until he was taken to live with his mother’s married sister in Brooklyn ten months later, I was the prosthesis.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Sanford “Sandy” Roth, Alvin Roth, Aunt Evelyn, Charles Lindbergh, Seldon Wishnow, Mrs. Wishnow
Related Symbols: Alvin’s Prosthesis
Page Number: 361-362
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Plot Against America LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Plot Against America PDF

Charles Lindbergh Quotes in The Plot Against America

The The Plot Against America quotes below are all either spoken by Charles Lindbergh or refer to Charles Lindbergh. 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:
Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“Alvin’s going to go to Canada and join the Canadian army,” he said. “He’s going to fight for the British against Hitler.”

“But nobody can beat Roosevelt,” I said.

“Lindbergh’s going to. America’s going to go fascist.”

Then we just stood there together under the intimidating spell of the three portraits [of Lindbergh.]

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Sanford “Sandy” Roth (speaker), Alvin Roth, Charles Lindbergh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), Adolf Hitler
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:

“I am here,” Rabbi Bengelsdorf [said,] “to crush all doubt of the unadulterated loyalty of the American Jews to the United States of America. […] America is our beloved homeland. America is our only homeland. Our religion is independent of any piece of land other than this great country, to which, now as always, we commit our total devotion and allegiance as the proudest of citizens. I want Charles Lindbergh to be my president not in spite of my being a Jew but because I am a Jew—an American Jew.”

Related Characters: Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (speaker), Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 35-36
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

We had driven right to the very heart of American history, and whether we knew it in so many words, it was American history, delineated in its most inspirational form, that we were counting on to protect us against Lindbergh.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Herman Roth, Bess Roth, Sanford “Sandy” Roth, Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:

It was from there that we heard him refer to my father as “a loudmouth Jew,” followed a moment later by the elderly lady declaring, “I’d give anything to slap his face.”

Mr. Taylor led us quickly away to a smaller hall just off the main chamber where there was a tablet inscribed with the Gettysburg Address and a mural whose theme was the Emancipation.

“To hear words like that in a place like this,” said my father, his choked voice quivering with indignation. “In a shrine to a man like this!”

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Herman Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh, Mr. Taylor
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

“An independent destiny for America”—that was the phrase Lindbergh repeated some fifteen times in his State of the Union speech and again at the close of his address on the night of June 22. When I asked my father to explain what the words meant […] he frowned and said, “It means turning our back on our friends. It means making friends with their enemies. You know what it means, son? It means destroying everything that America stands for.”

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Herman Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 84
Explanation and Analysis:

“The Jews of America […] are unlike any other community of Jews in the history of the world. […] The Jews of America can participate fully in the national life of their country. They need no longer dwell apart, a pariah community separated from the rest.”

Related Characters: Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (speaker), Philip Roth, Aunt Evelyn, Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 106-107
Explanation and Analysis:

We never followed anybody we thought was Jewish. They didn’t interest us. Our curiosity was directed at men, the adult Christian men who worked all day in downtown Newark. Where did they go when they went home?

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh, Earl Axman
Page Number: 116
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“Alvin can’t bear your president,” my father replied, “that’s why he went to Canada. Not so long ago you couldn’t bear the man either. But now this anti-Semite is your friend. The Depression is over, all you rich Jews tell me, and thanks not to Roosevelt but to Mr. Lindbergh. The stock market is up, profits are up, business is booming—and why? Because we have Lindbergh’s peace instead of Roosevelt’s war.”

Related Characters: Herman Roth (speaker), Alvin Roth (speaker), Uncle Monty (speaker), Philip Roth, Bess Roth, Aunt Evelyn, Charles Lindbergh, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)
Page Number: 124
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

My brother had discovered in himself the uncommon gift to be somebody, and so while making speeches praising President Lindbergh and while exhibiting his drawings of him and while publicly extolling (in words written by Aunt Evelyn) the enriching benefits of his eight weeks as a Jewish farm hand in the Gentile heartland—while doing, if the truth be known, what I wouldn’t have minded doing myself, by doing what was normal and patriotic all over America and aberrant and freakish only in his home—Sandy was having the time of his life.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Sanford “Sandy” Roth, Aunt Evelyn, Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

“I am not running away!” he shouted, startling everyone. “This is our country!” “No, my mother said sadly, “not anymore. It’s Lindbergh’s. It’s the goyim’s. It’s their country,” she said, and her breaking voice and the shocking words and the nightmare immediacy of what was mercilessly real forced my father […] to see himself with mortifying clarity: a devoted father of titanic energy no more capable of protecting his family from harm than was Mr. Wishnow hanging dead in the closet.

Related Characters: Herman Roth (speaker), Bess Roth (speaker), Philip Roth, Charles Lindbergh, Mr. Wishnow
Page Number: 226
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Of course, that no Jew could ever be elected to the presidency—least of all a Jew with a mouth as unstoppable as Winchell’s—even a kid as young as I was already accepted, as if the proscription were laid out in so many words in the U.S. Constitution. Yet not even that ironclad certainty could stop the adults from abandoning common sense and, for a night or two, imagining themselves and their children as native-born citizens of Paradise.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh, Walter Winchell
Page Number: 244-245
Explanation and Analysis:

“Well, like it or not, Lindbergh is teaching us what it is to be Jews.” Then she added, “We only think we’re Americans.” “Nonsense. No!” my father replied. “They think we only think we’re Americans. It is not up for discussion, Bess. It is not up for negotiation. These people are not understanding that I take this for granted, goddamnit! Others? He dares to call us others? He’s the other. The one who looks most American—and he’s the one who is least American!”

Related Characters: Herman Roth (speaker), Bess Roth (speaker), Philip Roth, Alvin Roth, Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 255-256
Explanation and Analysis:

A previously unpublicized section of the homesteading plan called the Good Neighbor Project [was] designed to introduce a steadily increasing number of non-Jewish residents into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and in this way “enrich” the “Americanness” of everyone involved. […] The underlying goal of the Good Neighbor Project like that of Just Folks, was to weaken the solidarity of the Jewish social structure as well as to diminish whatever electoral strength a Jewish community might have in local and congressional elections.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Charles Lindbergh
Page Number: 280-281
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

This was how Seldon came to live with us. After their safe return to Newark from Kentucky, Sandy moved into the sun parlor and Seldon took over where Alvin and Aunt Evelyn had left off—as the person in the twin bed next to mine shattered by the malicious indignities of Lindbergh’s America. There was no stump for me to care for this time. The boy himself was the stump, and until he was taken to live with his mother’s married sister in Brooklyn ten months later, I was the prosthesis.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Sanford “Sandy” Roth, Alvin Roth, Aunt Evelyn, Charles Lindbergh, Seldon Wishnow, Mrs. Wishnow
Related Symbols: Alvin’s Prosthesis
Page Number: 361-362
Explanation and Analysis: