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    Summary and Analysis of It Can't Happen Here: Based on the Book by Sinclair Lewis
    Summary and Analysis of It Can't Happen Here: Based on the Book by Sinclair Lewis
    Summary and Analysis of It Can't Happen Here: Based on the Book by Sinclair Lewis
    Ebook62 pages46 minutes

    Summary and Analysis of It Can't Happen Here: Based on the Book by Sinclair Lewis

    By Worth Books

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    About this ebook

    So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of It Can’t Happen Here tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Sinclair Lewis’s book.
     
    Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.
     
    This short summary and analysis of It Can’t Happen Here includes:
     
    • Historical context
    • Chapter-by-chapter overviews
    • Profiles of the main characters
    • Detailed timeline of key events
    • Themes and symbols
    • Important quotes and analysis
    • Fascinating trivia
    • Glossary of terms
    • Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work
     
    About It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis:
     
    Sinclair Lewis’s satirical novel It Can’t Happen Here documents the rise of a fascist government in the United States.
     
    It follows a small town newspaper editor, Doremus Jessup, as he watches his country come out of economic depression only to embrace a smoke-and-mirrors presidential candidate who wraps himself in patriotic zeal. This charismatic demagogue and his cronies amass power and wealth as the rest of the population watches its rights and freedoms disappear.
     
    There is censorship, the random violence of an unchecked paramilitary force, and the emergence of concentration camps. Jews, foreigners, and intellectuals are singled out for especially brutal treatment. Universities are taken over and books are burned.  
     
    As he watches the devastating toll exacted from his friends and family, the once easygoing Jessup is swept into an underground resistance movement in which he must ignore his moral compass. A revolution is launched, but the outcome is uncertain.
     
    Lewis’s dystopian work asks: could it happen here and, if it does, how would it be stopped?
     
    The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of fiction.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 11, 2017
    ISBN9781504044943
    Summary and Analysis of It Can't Happen Here: Based on the Book by Sinclair Lewis
    Author

    Worth Books

    Worth Books’ smart summaries get straight to the point and provide essential tools to help you be an informed reader in a busy world, whether you’re browsing for new discoveries, managing your to-read list for work or school, or simply deepening your knowledge. Available for fiction and nonfiction titles, these are the book summaries that are worth your time.  

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      Book preview

      Summary and Analysis of It Can't Happen Here - Worth Books

      Contents

      Context

      Overview

      Cast of Characters

      Summary

      Character Analysis

      Themes and Symbols

      Direct Quotes and Analysis

      Trivia

      What’s That Word?

      Critical Response

      About Sinclair Lewis

      For Your Information

      Bibliography

      Copyright

      Context

      Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here in 1935, during the Great Depression, when the American political climate was shifting toward extremism. Economic upheaval, both at home and abroad, had populations embracing smoke-and-mirrors solutions to their problems. The pro-Nazi German American Bund (or German American Federation) had some 10,000 members, while the anti-Semitic Silver Legion (whose members wore silver shirts, reminiscent of Germany’s Brown Shirts) had spread across the country. There was an assassination plot against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, and other novelists had written their own cautionary tales, including A Cool Million by Nathanael West and Those Who Perish by Edward Dahlberg, both in 1934.

      To a large degree, Lewis’s satirical work responded to a fear in the United States that powerful figures like radio priest Charles Coughlin in Michigan, and Senator Huey Long in Louisiana, would together fuel a dangerous American-style populism. (Long, a Democrat nicknamed The Kingfish, had maintained he would challenge FDR, whom he once supported, in the 1936 presidential election.) Although Lewis was not especially political, he was alarmed by extremism. The book features a large cast of characters, and, at the time it was published, many of its readers looked for—and found—thinly veiled versions of real-life figures among them.

      Just weeks after Lewis finished the novel, Long was assassinated at the Louisiana State Capitol. Although any Long usurpation of the White House was now moot, public interest in populist schemes and promises remained high. Lewis’s cautionary tale about the danger of fascism—and the fragility of democracy—still draws readers in today’s fraught political climate. After Donald J. Trump’s inauguration in 2017, It Can’t Happen Here became an instant bestseller: the novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s authoritarian appeal (Salon). Lewis and John C. Moffitt wrote a stage version of It Can’t Happen Here that, nearly 80 years later, continues to be produced.

      Overview

      The year is 1936, and the United States is preparing for a new presidential election. In Fort Beulah, Vermont, local residents find themselves taking sides in a wave of populism that will pit the honest but uninspiring Republican candidate, Senator Walt Trowbridge, against a charismatic Democrat, Berzelius Buzz Windrip, who promises $5,000 to every American citizen. Central to Windrip’s campaign is his book, Zero Hour, which makes confused and contradictory claims and promises but carries something that appeals to everyone.

      Protagonist Doremus Jessup, the local newspaper editor, is troubled by the political campaign. His wife Emma is loving but not a deep thinker, and she is mostly disengaged from the political developments around her. The couple’s offspring—Mary (married to a successful doctor in town and mother of a young son); high-energy uncensored Sissy (courted by Julian Falck, grandson of the local Episcopalian minister); and ambitious lawyer Philip—each experience

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