The Plot Against America

“Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.”

An adult Philip begins narrating from an unknown point in the future. Not only is he preparing the reader for fear, but perpetual fear. This foreshadowing underwrites every paragraph in the book, inviting the reader to look for signs of unrest and unease, even in situations or developments that might initially seem innocuous.

“He’s giving the goyim all over the country his personal rabbi’s permission to vote for Lindy on Election Day. Don’t you see, Uncle Hermann, what they got the great Bengelsdorf to do? He just guaranteed Roosevelt’s defeat!”

Alvin sees that the Nazis have co-opted Bengelsdorf to do some of their propaganda work for them. If a respected rabbi is saying that Lindbergh is not a danger, then the concerns of Jews who fear Lindbergh can be dismissed as irrational, or ignorant. This is another example of how disastrous it can be to have the wrong person—Bengelsdorf, in this case—as the voice or face of a group.

“It turned out, the experts concluded, that twentieth-century Americans, weary of confronting a new crisis every decade, were starving for normalcy, and what Charles A. Lindbergh represented was normalcy raised to heroic proportions.”

Despite the abnormal situation that arises as a result of Lindbergh’s election, he is seen by the voters as a steady candidate who will be the opposite of The Great Depression and the European horrors of World War I. But it is Lindbergh’s status as a hero that convinces people that he will be able to keep the country out of turmoil, even though his heroic acts of aviation—and the