“‘We knew things were bad,’ my father told the friends he immediately sat down to phone when we got home, ‘But not like this. You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare.’” — The Plot Against America: A Novel by Philip Roth
There are multiple memorable passages in the novel The Plot Against America, but it wouldn’t wrong to say that the the chapter where the Roth family visits Washington D.C. is the centerpiece of the entire book… even though it comes early, in chapter two.
Like a lot of the novel, the Washington sequence feels like a personal reminiscence more than a cautionary alternate history. The Roths take a trip they’d planned long before the Lindbergh election, and thanks to some help from Mr. Taylor, a friendly and knowledgeable guide, they experience the city at its best, circa 1941: from the bustling diners and clean, well-lit streets to the gleaning monuments and surrounding historical sites.
But they also get their first real sense of how America has changed since Lindy’s inauguration. The hotel they booked months in advance says there’s been a mix-up, and summarily evicts them—with the help of an unsympathetic police force. When Herman talks loudly about how Roosevelt should’ve won, other tourists shush and openly insult him. When Lindbergh does one of his near-daily flybys over the national mall, the crowds ooh and aah. The chapter unfolds like a great short story, culminating in the moment when the former university professor Mr. Taylor—who had been polite to the point of being inscrutable up to that point—stands up for the Roths against an antisemitic blowhard.
The HBO version of The Plot Against America literally puts the Washington trip at the center of the story. The sequence happens in the final 20 minutes of “Part 3” of a six-part miniseries. It represents a turning point in the narrative. For most of the first three hours, this family (the Levins on TV instead of the Roths) has tried to convince themselves that President Lindbergh’s win was a fluke. From deep in their leftist Jewish New Jersey bubble—where they’re mostly only hearing rumors and reports from Walter Winchell about what’s happening across America—they can still believe they’re part of a righteous majority. Visiting D.C. shatters any remaining illusions.
The TV Plot Against America compresses the book’s D.C. material considerably, but includes the parts that matter most. We see Bess’s mounting concern that the authorities are just going to round them up and ship them to a concentration camp; and we see her frustration that Herman can’t just play it cool and keep his mouth shut. We see Herman determined to use his freedom of speech, even as his open contempt for Lindbergh irritates strangers.
Most importantly, Ed Burns and David Simon include Mr. Taylor (played by the fantastic Fringe and Sweeney Todd actor Michael Cerveris), the Roths/Levins’ eloquent and genteel guide, whose true feelings about politics and Herman remain somewhat mysterious, up until the moment when he gets in the face of a large and loud Lindbergh supporter. Even then—in the book and on TV—it’s not entirely clear whether Taylor defends Herman because he’s a Roosevelt man himself or if he’s just a staunch supporter of civility.
Either way, the moment of brotherhood is a welcome relief during an otherwise dispiriting vacation; and it’s reinforced when the restaurant’s manager then offers the family extra coffee and ice cream, and urges them to stay as long as they like. As a sweet capper to the scene, Herman sings a song inspired by the Indiana college where Mr. Taylor taught: “On The Banks Of The Wabash, Far Away.” Once again, Herman asserts his essential Americanness.
Much of the rest of “Part 3” gets into the very different post-election experiences of two members of the Levins’ extended family. Having fled to Canada, Alvin is now in Europe, training with the British and “canoodling” with their women, while angling to kill as many Germans as he can. When one of his sexual conquests—an agent working with British intelligence—suggests to him that he should be fighting for a real cause and not just out of “spite,” he shrugs and suggest that as far as reasons for war go, spite “will do.” The result? Alvin gets his leg blown off and ends the episode unconscious in a hospital bed.
Meanwhile, Bess’ sister Evelyn is riding high thanks to her fella, Rabbi Bengelsdorf, who’s just been named the head of Lindbergh’s new “Office Of American Absorption,” an agency meant to soften the president’s past antisemitic comments by suggesting that maybe he had a point, and that maybe the Jews and other racial, ethnic and religious minorities could do a better job trying to fit in. One of the initial OAA programs is called “Just Folks,” and Evelyn wants her nephew Sandy to take part, and spend a summer living with a farm family in Kentucky. Sandy is eager to do it, because he’s looking forward to sketching the animals down south. Herman, of course, is adamantly against it… until he meets the Indianan Mr. Taylor, that is, and decides that maybe middle Americans aren’t so bad.
One of the more fascinating questions raised by this TV adaptation of The Plot Against America is something that’s inherent in the material but not quite as overt as Burns and Simon have made it: How much are the choices these characters make driven by their deeply held ideals, and how much is just a product of how they were raised, and how they’ve been treated all their lives? Herman seems committed to the progressive, egalitarian platform of the Democratic Party; but as we saw last week, that doesn’t stop him from defending Alvin’s piggish boss. Alvin, on the other hand, is a perpetual underdog and an impulsive tough guy, who fights for the right side in part because that’s where the action is.
And Rabbi Bengelsdorf and Evelyn? Well, their situations are nuanced too (and arguably more complicated than in Roth’s novel). The Rabbi isn’t completely unaware of the bigotry that buoyed Lindbergh. He admits to Evelyn that Henry Ford—now the Secretary Of The Interior—is a stone-cold Jew-hater, who, he marvels, “will be entirely polite when you meet him.” And Bergsdorf probably isn’t entirely comfortable with President Lindbergh shaking hands with Adolf Hitler at a peace conference either, although he accepts that devil’s bargain as a way to keep young Americans from dying in a war—and to keep Soviet-style socialism from reaching U.S. shores.
As for Evelyn… well, she’s a case study in how, as Herman Roth puts it in the novel, one person’s nightmare can be another’s dream. Evelyn doesn’t seem especially interested in Bengelsdorf’s politics, or even his faith. (She has trouble following along with the service when she attends his synagogue.) But after spending much of her adulthood taking care of a sickly and senile mother who only talks about her sister Bess, she finally has something that’s hers. One of the more chilling—and yet sensible—ideas in this Plot Against America is that not everyone supports an evil regime for immoral reasons. Sometimes they follow a demagogue just because they’re tired of feeling excluded.
Stray observations
- This episode also dramatizes another of the book’s best-known scenes: Philip’s nightmare that all of the stamps in his album have been replaced by images of Hitler and swastikas. The stamp album is a powerful symbol in the novel; and though it’s appeared only a few times in the miniseries thus far, it’s carried much the same meaning. A lot of Phil’s identity as an ordinary patriotic kid is tied to his meticulously kept collections of U.S. president stamps and U.S. national monument stamps and so on. It’s pretty harrowing then, seeing those images of America overwritten with Nazi iconography overnight—almost as though the fascism was always there, ready to burn through.
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The stark immediacy of Alvin’s demise may have been because of budget. If you can’t go full GoT with your war scenes then maybe you just don’t go there at all. But OTOH it may be illustrating the cold randomness of war. Like the guys who never made it off a landing craft at Normandy. Everything was just…over, in an instant. 100 feet or 90 seconds later or earlier and it’s all different. For all of Alvin’s grand intentions, he just was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s all his war story is.
I love this production’s alliteration to modern day Trumpers. The 1941 version is the same bullying ignorant bloated pig as 2020, but better dressed and bathed.
The same goes for the neurotic Jews/neurotic anti-Trumpers.
That’s how I read Alvin’s injury as well. It was kind of jarring in how it happened just like that, especially after all the set up of Alvin being ready to kill Nazis and probably able to handle himself on the battlefield. Sometimes you get sent to steal some plans and then you get your leg blown off and it’s just over.
That’s the seed of his disillusionment. Not only was his part in the war in service of the British desire for Nazi technology rather than the moral imperative, but he didn’t even get to kill any Nazis.
And you know, I guess working this through, he’s going to return as an “enemy” given the US pairing with Hitler. Based on history we reflexively think of any Allied fighter as a hero, but this story turns that position on its head. That possibly being the focus is probably why they hurried through his actual demise. His real story is what comes after.
I liked the way the episode captured the experience of paranoia when you aren’t really sure who to trust, with some people (like Taylor or the first cop they meet) being totally innocuous while others aren’t.As a minor “real history” thing, Herman’s friend remarks that there aren’t enough Democrats in Congress to oppose Lindbergh’s foreign policy is emblematic of a trend in the show’s writing to essentially transport the 2020 party system back to 1940. Neither the Dems nor the GOP were anywhere near as ideologically homogeneous as they are now, nobody in 1940 talking about Congress would assume that all Democrats were pro-Britain/anti-fascist or that the GOP were the opposite. Both parties had strong, vocal isolationist and internationalist wings at this time.
Your point about the assumed homogeneity of the parties struck me, too.
Haven’t started the show yet (planning to binge soon) but I’m a giant fan of the book. Can anyone tell me how close/faithful it is just to set my expectations?
I assume Roth does not ogle his aunt’s boobs on the show.
I haven’t read it but my wife who did says it is “really close” to the book. I imagine they have highlighted some things more than others but so far she says it hewing to it. .
it is for sure less directly autobiographical, but otherwise faithful. Orienting more directly around Herman than Philip reflects that.
I read it while watching the show, and it is remarkably faithful. Like, taking lines of dialogue from the book and putting them in actor’s mouths faithful. I really don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
With his wife and children being right there with him, I can’t understand how Herman couldn’t see how much danger he was putting them in by continually and loudly voicing his political opinions in places where it was clearly not welcomed. I mean, I have some pretty serious issues with politics these days, but if I happen to find myself in a place like Tyler, TX or Macclenny, FL, I’m not going to go around telling everyone what they are. It’s an invitation for redneck beat-down.
Learn to read the room, dude.
Important to keep in mind that Herman has never had to deal with society being so openly bigoted toward him. He’s a guy who thinks of himself in the mold of an American man: head of his household, his way or the highway. As a man in America who is usually in his own Jewish community, his privilege has taught him that you can say whatever you like. He shows multiple times in this episode that he thinks he can simply assert his own reality and things will remain mostly the same. That’s why he’s talking about buying a house. He’s doubling down on his fantasy of being just like everyone else in America.
Not just his immediate community, but in Newark and (likely) NYC in general. Relatively cosmopolitan places where, in 1941, you could probably still hear Yiddish on street corners as a matter of course
I got the distinct feeling that former College Professor Mr. Taylor (probably not his real name) lost his job because he was a Jew, and has since assimilated (or being ‘absorbed’) by acting as tour guide under a different name.As many of us know, many Jewish academics lost their positions in Germany simply because they were no longer seen fit to teach.
I was thinking he might be gay instead. It brings another oppressed vantage point in to view, certain to be targeted by the Aryan Supremacist ilk. Given the acting talent, I would be surprised if we’ve seen the end of him in this.
I think that’s as good assumption as any – there was certainly more to Mr Taylor than met the eye.
I also thought it telling that the show (or Herman) made a point of asking what he had done in a previous life. Prior to being asked, Mr Taylor had given no indication that he had done anything else – and the answer (former college prof) was a historically loaded one. As far as I know, gay academics were not persecuted by the Nazis – although Germany (unlike America) did have a vibrant – and relatively open – gay community that was persecuted.
1940s Jews were not the biggest fans of homosexuals either.
I was having a serious problem with the credibility of Levin making such a visible show of his protesting in front of his wife and children. I understand the show is attempting to portray his integrity for right and wrong, a voice for the oppressed but it pushed too far, especially at the Lincoln Memorial where it became cringey and didactic.That said, I have never seen DC photographed so beautifully in some time. It is my favorite city in the US and the memorials are a huge reason.
I was having a serious problem with the credibility of Levin making such a visible show of his protesting in front of his wife and children.
A loudmouth from Jersey? Get the fuck outta here!
LOL! That line was ringing in my ears when typing my post.
I binged the first three episodes last night, because I’ve not been sleeping. It didn’t calm my nerves.
One of the more chilling—and yet sensible—ideas in this Plot Against America
is that not everyone supports an evil regime for immoral reasons.
Sometimes they follow a demagogue just because they’re tired of feeling
excluded.Love this line!
A lot of people vote a certain way because their friends, neighbors, and community do. They don’t necessarily have to be politically informed.
Farms? Summer Camp? Are they trying to JoJo Rabbit Sandy?
The song Levin sings at the diner, “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away”, was a deep-pull for a 2020 television production. But the song itself has a rich history in the innovation of the first cylinder phonograph recordings, sheet music, and in the formulation of copyright law itself.The patrons could have a bigger reaction to Levin’s performance of a sentimental favorite and it would have made that scene more resonant.Also, I haven’t been in the state for a while, but I’ve never heard anyone from Indiana call themselves an “Indianan”. The word is Hoosier.
This show hit its stride for me this episode. The first two weren’t really holding my interest, but I’m glad I stuck with it. Looking forward to where it goes from here.
Man, is this show gorgeous to look at. I was moved by Bess’ paranoia and fear. Herman, I’ve been, and I fully sympathize with him, even if he was putting his family in danger. That entire diner scene was gold, especially the turn towards the sentimental and diffusing the situation. Mr. Rebecca Hall does have a good singing voice.I wondered if Alvin’s girlfriend in the hospital coldly left him, forever, or if she just left. I figured she would kiss his forehead or something. That Just Folks program. Imagine a Mexican kid from L.A. today being sent to Kentucky to live with a white family. It’s terrible.I would watch a show centered on Alvin that goes beyond the book. Great character and actor.
Nothing about the rabbi not being able to “perform” for someone as pretty as Winona?? Geddattahere!
He didn’t didn’t like “Heathers” and it’s still bothering him.
This was my favorite episode so far. The actress who plays Bess made her anxiety not just palpable but overwhelming. My heart was in my throat watching her during the scene with the police officer in the street (who, props to the costume department, looked exactly like an SS officer).
“Just Folks” is a stroke of propaganda genius. I am incredibly impressed by whoever came up with that in the writers’ room.I’m still perplexed by Bengelsdorf’s motivations, especially given the glimpse into next week’s (this week’s, since I’m week late) episode.
Pretty sure Phillip Roth came up with that in his writer’s room.
Touche. I forgot for a moment that would’ve been taken straight from the book.
People from Indiana are called Hoosiers.