It Can't Happen Here

Even though Jessup anticipates Windrip’s win, he takes the news like the “long-dreaded passing of a friend” (104). Jessup resolves to divorce himself from politics and spends several days locked in his office, reading and only seeing his family and close friends. However, he feels guilty and irritable at Windrip’s win and finds himself unable to enjoy his books. Jessup has also felt frustrated since the start of the Great Depression; he can’t seem to plan for the future as his parents did, and the uncertainty posed by Windrip’s potentially-authoritarian rule worries him.

In December 1936, Jessup picks up Julian Falck from college to bring him home for Christmas vacation. Along the way, they stop at Pollikop and Pascal’s gas station. Pascal is excited about Windrip winning, as he feels that a fascist government will lead to a communist revolution, and that American communism won’t be as bad as Stalin’s communism. Pollikop criticizes Pascal and the communists for refusing to join a united front against Windrip.

Spurred on by their argument, Jessup returns home, where he writes an article that criticizes all those who would offer totalizing, utopian solutions that employ communist, fascist, or monarchist ideology. He argues that these solutions are driven by fanatics who think the world can only be saved their way, and that these “well-meaning rabble-rousers” (115) have always had their utopias descend into violence.