The Plot Against America

Fear is defined as a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger. This emotion is expressed immensely throughout the novel, The Plot Against America. By reading the first paragraph, the reader can't imagine what horrifying events could lead one to have such a fear. "Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear. Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews." (Roth 1) Philip Roth, the son of Herman and Bess Roth, had such a permanent fear of Charles Lindbergh,(the supposed next president of the United States in the 1940 election against Franklin Roosevelt, controlling the world and ruining his and his family's life, as well as the rest of the Jews), that his thoughts while awake and dreaming are taken over by the fear of losing his family, his house, and everything he has ever known. The quote about fear that starts off the story is very significant because it foreshadows the danger ahead.

After Lindbergh was put into office, the Jews quickly began to see the liking that he had for Hitler. "Lindbergh's not mentioning the Jews was to them a trick and no more, the initiation of a campaign of deceit intended both to shut us up and to catch us off guard." (Roth 17) Philip as well as his family knew that they were going to watch his every step even if it meant moving from Weequahic, the working-class section in Newark, New Jersey to Canada. People started to talk about it, which would make one suspect the worst from early on. "Some of our friends and neighbors had already begun talking about leaving the country and migrating to Canada should the Lindbergh administration openly turn against the Jews, and so a trip to Canada would also familiarize us with a potential haven from persecution." (Roth 44)

Later on, Philip started dreaming about the possibility of being wiped out by Lindbergh. "In the dream, I was walking to Earl's with my stamp album clutched to my chest...Washington wasn't on the stamps anymore. Unchanged at the top of each stamp-lettered in what I'd learned to recognize as white-faced roman and spaced out on either one of two lines- was the legend "United States Postage. The colors of the stamps were unchanged as well...but instead of a different portrait of Washington on each of the twelve stamps, the portraits were now the same and no longer of Washington but of Hitler." (Roth 43) Even when he finally woke up from that nightmare, he said that "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." (Roth 43)

Although the families tried to live a normal life, the Jews weren't able to stop from thinking that they were going to lose their lives and their families and everyone they loved. "All the Jews could do was worry...The younger kids like me came home from school frightened and bewildered and even in tears because of what the older boys had been telling one another about what Lindbergh has said about us to Hitler and what Hitler had said about us to Lindbergh during their meals together in Iceland. (Roth 55) Furthermore, the parents even tried to convince Philip and his brother Sandy that just because Roosevelt wasn't the president any longer, any terrifying was going to happen.

"One reason my parents decided to keep to our long-laid plan to visit Washington was to convince Sandy and me-whether of not they themselves believed it-that nothing had changed other than that FDR was no longer in office." (Roth 55)

Moreover, the Jewish people kept getting reminded of how influence people were by Charles and his wife and considered them heroic figures in society at the time. After viewing Lindbergh's wife, Anne, flying over George Washington's house, Philip's father was disgusted to see how much