The Plot Against America

by

Philip Roth

In the Hebrew Bible, Gentiles are non-Jewish people. The Yiddish term for Gentiles is goyim.

Gentile Quotes in The Plot Against America

The The Plot Against America quotes below are all either spoken by Gentile or refer to Gentile. For each quote, you can also see the other terms 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

It was when I looked next at the album’s facing page to see what, if anything, had happened to my 1934 National Parks set of ten that I fell out of the bed and woke up on the floor, this time screaming. […] Across the face of each, […] across everything in America that was the bluest and the greenest and the whitest and to be preserved forever in these pristine reservations, was printed a black swastika.

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker), Sanford “Sandy” Roth
Related Symbols: Philip’s Stamps
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

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 5 Quotes

Gone were the wall banners proclaiming “Wake up America—Smash Jewish Communists!” […] and the big white buttons with the black lettering that had been distributed to Bund members to stick into their lapels, the buttons that read:

KEEP AMERICA
OUT OF
THE JEWISH WAR

Related Characters: Philip Roth (speaker)
Page Number: 176-177
Explanation and Analysis:

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

“And who will I talk to?” she asked. “Who will I have there like the friends I’ve had my whole life?”

“There are women there, too.”

“Gentile women,” she said. […] “Good Christian women,” she said,” who will fall all over themselves to make me feel at home. They have no right to do this!” she proclaimed. […] “this is illegal. You cannot just take Jews because they’re Jews and force them to live where you want them to.”

Related Characters: Herman Roth (speaker), Bess Roth (speaker), Philip Roth, Sanford “Sandy” Roth
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:

“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:
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Gentile Term Timeline in The Plot Against America

The timeline below shows where the term Gentile appears in The Plot Against America. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Vote for Lindbergh or Vote for War
Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation Theme Icon
Family and Home Theme Icon
...Though the Roth’s bustling, firmly middle-class neighborhood is predominantly Jewish, the surrounding neighborhoods are predominantly Gentile, or non-Jewish. Though all of Philip’s schoolmates and neighbors are Jewish, he feels that work... (full context)
Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation Theme Icon
Historical Fact vs. Emotional Truth Theme Icon
Family and Home Theme Icon
...father was offered a promotion—and a transfer to an office six miles away in a Gentile neighborhood. Philip’s mother Bess, who grew up in Elizabeth as part of one of the... (full context)
Chapter 5: Never Before
Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation Theme Icon
Isolationism vs. Solidarity Theme Icon
Historical Fact vs. Emotional Truth Theme Icon
Family and Home Theme Icon
...the street in full view of the bustling downtown crowds. Philip cries uncontrollably—he notices confused Gentiles walking by enjoying a “carefree spring [afternoon] in Lindbergh’s peacetime America.” (full context)
Chapter 6: Their Country
Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation Theme Icon
Isolationism vs. Solidarity Theme Icon
Historical Fact vs. Emotional Truth Theme Icon
Family and Home Theme Icon
...idea of being the only Jewish family in town. She has no interest in befriending “Gentile women” who will be nice to her face but harbor anti-Semitic thoughts behind her back.... (full context)
Chapter 9: Perpetual Fear
Jewish Identity vs. Assimilation Theme Icon
...who was lynched in Georgia in 1913 after he was suspected of killing a young Gentile worker in his pencil factory named Mary Phagan. His body was displayed as a warning... (full context)