Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America": alternate history analysis

Philip Roth Books

The Plot Against America -- Summary

The Roth's, a Jewish family, reside in an undersized apartment in Newark, New Jersey. Father Herman, 39, sells insurance and makes enough to put bread on the family's table -- just barely. Mother Bess, an at-home Mom, takes care of their two sons -- Sandy, 12, and Philip, 8. Philip, the story-teller for this book, is a philatelic (stamp collector).

In 1940, Charles Lindbergh runs against and defeats FDR for the presidency. Lindberg, an anti-Semite and outspoken critic of the Jews as well as an isolationist regarding WWII, initiates a mood of religious hatred that results in acts of violence against Jews across the U.S. It becomes not quite the true WWII Germany -- but close. Herman loudly and boldly denounces Lindbergh.

It gets to the point that Herman Roth cannot protect his family, and the family splits -- brother against brother -- over the potential result of "Lindy's" policies -- those who understand the horrible reality, and the ones who are forced into supporting their own future ruin.

Two years after "Lindy's" election, killings and riots are taking place and Jewish families are en masse attempting to escape over the Canadian border to safety. Walter Winchell, the famed Jewish journalist and broadcaster, is assassinated.

Philip's scared but always imaginative mother, Bess, does everything she can to keep the family free from harm while worldly events around her are totally beyond her capacity to do anything about. Herman tries to understand this new world order and the oppressive, unbelievable events that are occurring in his own country.

And, in the end, the revealing of why Lindbergh acted as he did is assigned to the yet unknown fact that Hitler had, very early on, kidnapped his son and forced "Lindy's" actions.

The Plot Against America -- Personal Response

There is no question that this is a brilliantly conceived and masterfully carried out what if alternate history novel. It is mind-boggling, creative, and, I personally think, an act of genius on Roth's part to interweave fiction history and true events complete with actual characters and yet bring it to a conclusion -- one that some would call contrived -- that ties back into reality.

I think the detail of it -- Herman's attempt at grasping what was happening to his country -- helped me understand how Nazi Germany became the evil empire of the 1930s and 1940s.

It is one of the most frightening novels I have read. The whole book is soaked in fear -- Philip's, the family Roth, society in general. But there is also the endearing story of a Jewish family who, despite tremendous hardship, both physical and mental, love each other, and Roth displays this page after page.

It's interesting to note that the book takes place after the Great Depression devastated this country, and Roth brings back to life the extreme political movements at that time in the U.S., which, indeed, was a period of anti-Semitism here and abroad. Little known is that fact that Lindbergh (and Henry Ford) both received medals from Hitler and the Third Reich. This is the reality and the detail that Roth ties together so well in presenting a very realistic background for what could have really happened.

The other thing that impressed me was the realism of Roth's characters -- their believability, deep dimensionalism, and dialogue. Herman's statement after Lindbergh's election and hearing the cheering, roaring crowds, "They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare," brings back all the terrible things I have read and seen of the Jewish holocaust.

I have one final reaction to the book and that is that I can't wait to read it again -- slowly -- in order to truly absorb the mood of reality and fear that Roth has created in his what if world.

American Pastoral -- Personal Response

I enjoyed this novel tremendously. Perhaps because I can almost feel the pain of Swede as he progresses from his dream of tranquility prior to the 1960s -- an America that never will be again -- into the darkness and cold of the years after first John Kennedy, then his brother and Martin Luther King were assassinated.

In using his daughter as the epitomy of the counterculture, hippy, rebel generation that went to war on everyone, he brings the horror of the 60's close enough to sense it even if one has not lived through it. The hypocrisy of the generation who raged against conformity by conforming to the culture of the time is brought out in the personage of his daughter, Merry. Though he does seem to go overboard with his dismal illustration of that time, it is right on with the perspective of those who looked from the outside into the rebellion and the self-absorption of the snotty kids who didn't even know what they were rebelling against.

I enjoyed immensely Swede's perspective on it when he learned "the worst lesson life can teach -- that it makes no sense." Surely, it did not. I have to think of Roth's use of a bomb that his daughter used to kill, which also exploded Swede's dream of peace, and the analogy to the exploding dream of the 1960s and beyond.

His discussions are insightful, believable, and thoughtful. One in particular stabbed me with the reality of it. He talks about how hard we all try to comprehend or understand each other's motivations -- what makes each other tick -- and actions and thoughts, but that we are hopelessly wrong, again and again.

He can't accept what he cannot answer. And he can't answer because "it makes no sense."