It Can't Happen Here
It Can't Happen Here is a semi-satirical political novel by Sinclair Lewis published in 1935. It features newspaperman Doremus Jessup struggling against the fascist regime of President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip.
Plot
Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician, is elected President of the United States on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and, more importantly, promising each citizen five thousand dollars a year. Once in power, however, he becomes a dictator; outlawing dissent, putting his political enemies in concentration camps, and creating a paramilitary force called the Minute Men who terrorize the citizens. One of his first moves as president is to make changes to the Constitution which give the President sole power over the country, rendering Congress obsolete. This is met by protest from the congressmen as well as outraged citizens, but Windrip declares a state of Martial Law and, with the help of his Minute Men, throws the protesters in jail. As Windrip dismantles democracy, most Americans either support him and his Corpo Regime wholeheartedly or reassure themselves that fascism cannot happen in America (hence the book's title).
One of the few who openly oppose Windrip's regime is journalist Doremus Jessup, who writes editorials decrying the state's abuses of power. Shad Ledue, head of the state police and Jessup's former employee, terrorizes Jessup, eventually putting him in a camp. He also goes after Jessup's family, attempting to seduce Jessup's daughter, Sissy. Eventually, however, Ledue falls out of favor with Windrip, and he is put in the same camp as Jessup, where he is brutally murdered by the angry inmates he sent to the Camp. With help from a sympathetic guard, Jessup escapes from the camp, rejoins his family, and goes to Canada to join a resistance movement.
Eventually Windrip's hold on power begins to weaken; the economic prosperity he promises has not materialized, and more and more people are fleeing to Canada to escape his government's brutality. Eventually, Windrip's lieutenants stage a coup; Secretary of State and Windrip's number two man, Lee Sarason, becomes president and has Windrip exiled to France. In the ensuing power vacuum, they fight among themselves for control, setting the stage for the regime's self-destruction. After another coup, ousting Sarason in favor of General Haik, the Corpo Regime's power slowly starts seeping away and the government desperately tries to find a way to keep the people happy with the Regime. They decide to stir up patriotic fervor by slandering Mexico in the state-run newspapers, deciding an all-out invasion of the country will rally the American people around the government. But the resulting draft of 5 million men for the invasion splits the country into factions: those pro-war and loyal to the Corpo government, and those anti-war who now see that they have been manipulated for years. The story ends with Jessup in Minnesota, working with Walt Trowbridge, leader of the opposition movement, to end the Fascist regime's hold on the American people.
In other media
In 1936, Lewis and John C. Moffitt wrote a stage version, also titled It Can't Happen Here,[1] which is still produced. The stage version premiered on October 27, 1936 in several U.S. cities simultaneously, in productions sponsored by the Federal Theater Project.
A 1968 television movie, Shadow on the Land (alternate title: United States: It Can't Happen Here) was produced by Screen Gems as a pilot for a series loosely based on this book. [2]
Inspired by the book, director–producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation titled Storm Warnings, in 1982. The script was presented to NBC, for production as a television mini-series, but the NBC executives rejected the initial version, claiming it was too "cerebral" for the average American viewer. To make the script more marketable, the American fascists were re-cast as man-eating extraterrestrials, taking the story into the realm of science fiction. The new, re-cast story was the mini-series V, which premiered on May 3, 1983. A new version of V, a remake of the 1983 miniseries, began on ABC on November 3, 2009.
See also
References
- ^ IBDB listing for It Can't Happen Here
- ^ IMDb listing for Shadow on the Land
- ^
Gross, Edward (Fall 2004), ""Visiting Hours" TV's Most Famous Alien Invasion Saga Comes Home To DVD" ([dead link]), CFQ Spotlite, no. 1
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
External links
- Book review
- Public Enemy by Joe Keohane, Boston Globe, December 18, 2005.