Annotating It Can't Happen Here
Table of Contents
1 Abstract
An annotation of Sinclair Lewis' It Cant Happen Here is presented.
Objectives are distinguishing fictional charactes from historic, and separating authors other public figures. Links to on-line resources are include for the historic figures.
Chapter by Chapter quotes are exerpted in this annotation. These have been chosen for their increased relavanc since the election of 2016.
The References include a link to the online copy, where it is redundant, which is useful in the paper copy.
2 Historic Figures
Familiar names and less familiar, your choice. The 1936 Democratic Convention scene is where many names are entered.
| historical figure, linked | Noted for … or, in context |
|---|---|
| Father Charles Edward Coughlin | filled the airwaves |
| Thomas Dixon Jr | |
| Jim Farley | postmaster general, chaired the 1936 convention: |
| Carter Glass | Congressman, newspaper publisher, |
| Emma Goldman | anarchist political activist and writer, played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. |
| William Randolph Hearst | "Willum" according to Shad Ledue |
| James Thomas Heflin | |
| Cordell Hull | longest serving Secretary of State. Joseph Llelyveld, in "Final Months" portrays Hull as the Secretary Roosevelt wanted, since Roosevelt handled all the serious diplomacy. |
| Secretary (Harold L) Ickes | Secretary of the Interior, longest serving, and father of Pres Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff, Harold H. |
| Bernarr Macfadden | |
| William McAdoo | Secretary of Treasury, Senator from California |
| Thomas Mooney | |
| Floyd Olson | |
| Frances Perkins | First Woman in the Cabinet, longest serving Secretary of Labor. |
| Joseph Robinson | Senator from AR |
| Sacco and Vanzetti | Italian-born American anarchists who were convicted of murdering a guard. later executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison. |
| Al Smith | 1928 Democratic nominee, 4 time governor of New York |
| Upton Sinclair | |
| Norman Thomas | |
| Oswald Garrison Villard | |
| Wilber Glenn Voliva |
3 Groups, Institutions, Places
These are Fictional:
- League of Forgotten Man
- Isaiah College
- Fort Beulah
4 Authors
- Stuart Chase Stuart Chase (March 8, 1888 – November 16, 1985) was an American economist (MIT)…
- Chesterton G.K." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton, among other things, gave us the Father Brown Mysteries. See the quote from Chapter 7
- Ortega Probably referring to Jose Orgtega y Gasset.
- William Rollins Could it be William Herbert Rollins?
- John Strachey This one's a bit more chancy. I'm thinking the journalist
- Thomas Wolfe The easist to recognize: Wolfe was alive when Lewis wrote him in, but only for a few more years.
5 Characters
- A
- Alice Aylot
- B
- Charley Betts – Chapter six
- Arthur Brisbane
- C
- Mrs Candy – the housekeeper
- Medary Cole
- Roscoe Conkling (RC) Crowley
- E
- Brigadier General Herbert Y Edgeways
- F
- Julian Falck – In chapter 5, we learn:
This young man, freshman in Amherst the past year, grandson of the Episcopal rector and living with the old man because his parents were dead, was in the eyes of Doremus the most nearly tolerable of Sissy's suitors. He was Swede-blond and wiry, with a neat, small face and canny eyes. He called Doremus "sir," and he had, unlike most of the radio-and-motor-hypnotized eighteen-year-olds in the Fort, read a book, and voluntarily–read Thomas Wolfe and William Rollins, John Strachey and Stuart Chase and Ortega.
- Reverend Falck
- Foolish – Dogs most certainly are characters.
- G
- Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch
- Davy Greenhill
- Dr Fowler Greenhill and Family:
- Davy, Son
- Emma, Wife, mother
- Mary, Daughter
- J
- Doremus Jessup – A third cousin of Calvin Coolidge (ch 3) whose dog is named "Foolish"
When Doremus, back in the 1920's, had advocated the recognition of Russia, Fort Beulah had fretted that he was turning out-and-out Communist.
- Emma Jessup – In chapter 6, on Doremus:
… she was sick with the realization that he was growing older and more frail. His shoulders, she thought, were pathetic as those of an anemic baby. . . . That sadness of hers Doremus never guessed.
and in Ch 6:
"How you can tease people this way, pretending you really like greasy mechanics like this Pascal (and I suspect you even have a sneaking fondness for Shad Ledue!) when you could just associate with decent, prosperous people like Frank–it's beyond me! What they must think of you, sometimes! …"
- Cecilia (Sissy) Jessup
- Philip Jessup – Dartmouth, and Hardard Law, "ambitiously practicing law in Worcester"
- Mary Jessup Greenhill – wife of Fowler Greenhill, M.D. of Fort Beulah, and mother of the bonny David (8), only grandchild of Doremus and Emma.
- K
- Lawyer Kitterick
- L
- Oscar (Shad) Ledue
- Victor Loveland
- M
- Major General Hermann Meinecke – most likely fictional. references in Find-a-Grave and Ancestry.com don't yield generals.
- P
- Karl Pascal – Enters in Chapter 6, with Charly Betts and John Pollikop
- Dr Owen Peaseley – preisident of Isaiah College
- Father Stephen Perefixe – local RC priest
- Lorinda Pike – a sardonic saint
- John Pollikop – Enters in chapter 6 with Betts and Pascal:
a friendly, loquacious, belligerent Polish Socialist
- Bishop Prang
See
- R
- Louis Rottenstern
- S
- Lee Sarason
… Sarason had become decidedly the "hard-boiled reporter" of the shirt-sleeved tradition, who asserted that he would rather be called a prostitute than anything so sissified as "journalist." But it was suspected that nevertheless he still retained the ability to read.
- Reverend Dr Egerton Schlemil
- Emil Staubmeyer
- T
- Francis Tasbrough
- Malcom Tasbrough
- Buck Titus – Doremus closest intimate He was as near to the English country squire as one may find in America.
- Senator Walt Trowbridge
- V
- Cousin Henry Veeder
- W
- Senator Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip He drank Coca-Cola with the Methodists, beer with the Lutherans, California white wine with the Jewish village merchants–and, when they were safe fromobservation, white-mule corn whisky with all of them. Within twenty years he was as absolute a ruler of his state as ever a sultan was of Turkey.
He was never governor; …
6 Quotes and Notes
By Chapter:
6.1 Chapter 1
6.2 Chapter 2
- Nonsense! Nonsense!" snorted Tasbrough. "That couldn't happen here in America, not possibly! We're a country of freemen."
- Well, what if they are?" protested R. C. Crowley. "It might not be so bad. I don't like all these irresponsible attacks on us bankers all the time. Of course, Senator Windrip has to pretend publicly to bawl the banks out, but once he gets into power he'll give the banks their proper influence in the administration and take our expert financial advice.
- As Crowley says, might be a good thing to have a strong man in the saddle, but–it just can't happen here in America." And it seemed to Doremus that the softly moving lips of the Reverend Mr.Falck were framing, "The hell it can't!"
6.3 Chapter 3
- When I cautiously ask them what the dickens war they are preparing for they just scratch and indicate they don't care much, so long as they can get a chance to show what virile proud gents they are.
- But what can I do? Oh–write another editorial viewing-with-alarm, I suppose!
6.4 Chapter 4
- He was certain that some day America would have vast business dealings with the Russians and, though he detested all Slavs, he made the State University put in the first course in the Russian language that had been known in all that part of the West.
- But everybody was nibbling at those noble doctrines now, from Virginia Senators to Minnesota Farmer-Laborites, with no one being so credulous as to expect any of them to be carried out.
6.5 Chapter 5
- file under Shad Ledue: Or perhaps I'm scared of him–he's the kind of vindictive peasant that sets fire to barns. . . . Did you know that he actually reads, Phil"?
- during Bishop Prang's radio address, said Doremus to "the Mrs": Blandly he said, "Why, nothing much except that in a couple of years now, on the ground of protecting us, the Buzz Windrip dictatorship will be regimenting everything, from where we may pray to what detective stories we may read".
- while Dr. Fowler Greenhill jeered:
Aw, shoot, Dad–and you too, Julian, you young paranoiac–you're monomaniacs! Dictatorship? Better come into the office and let me examine your heads! Why, America's the only free nation on earth. Besides! Country's too big for a revolution. No, no! Couldn't happen here!"
6.6 Chapter 6
- Doremus thinking: But for all cruelty and intolerance, and for the contempt of the fortunate for the unfortunate, he had not mere dislike but testy hatred.
6.7 Chapter 7
The actual Democratic Convention of 1936 was in Philadelphia, not Cleveland. But Lewis is probably right about the strawberry soda, if not the gin. My grandfather, who attended, wrote a Martinis column as editor of the weekly Appleton (MN) Press. Compare and constrast with Doremus Jessup, editor/publisher of the Fort Beulah (VT) Daily Informer.
For Sarason had read his Chesterton well enough to know that there is only one thing bigger than a very big thing, and that is a thing so very small that it can be seen and understood.
Is this what we were expecting in the 2016 election?
Berzelius Windrip went to Wash.,
A riding on a hobby--
To throw Big Business out, by Gosh,
And be the People's Lobby!
7 References
- my local copy of It Can't Happen Here
- This paper is online at http://mcgowans.org/pubs/marty3/commonplace/lit/itcanthappen.html
- a comment on LibraryThing.
- mentioned in this NY Time Books article along with its subject: George Orwell's 1984 is Suddenly a Best-Seller. The writer, Kikimo de Freytas-Tamura, in acquainting the reader with Orwell's term newspeak, identifies Kellyanne Conaway's use of "alternate facts" as what Orwell was saying.
- while searching for the above, I came across this entry for "If Day", held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on February 19, 1942, as a demonstration of the horror of a facist take-over.