Book Club Discussion Questions
For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of The Plot Against America.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
About The Plot Against America
Set in Newark, New Jersey, in the early 1940s,
The Plot Against America tells
the story of what it was like for the Roth family and Jews across the country
when the isolationist aviation hero Charles Lindbergh was elected president of
the United States.
Roth's richly imagined novel begins in 1940, with the landslide election of
Lindbergh, who blamed the Jews for pushing America toward war with Nazi Germany.
Lindbergh's admiration of Hitler and his openly anti-Semitic speeches cause
increasing turmoil in the Roth household, and in nine-year-old Philip, as
political events at home and abroad overtake their daily lives. Alvin, the
orphaned nephew the family has taken in, runs away to Canada to fight the Nazis.
Sandy, Philip's older brother, ascribes his parents' fears to paranoia and
embraces Lindbergh's Just Folks program, which sends him and other Jewish
children to live in the "heartland" for a summer. Philip's mother, Bess, wants
the family to flee to Canada before it is too late to escape. But his fiercely
idealistic father, Herman, refuses to abandon the country where he was born and
raised as an American. Overwhelmed by the tensions around him, Philip tries to
run away. "I wanted nothing to do with history," he says. "I wanted to be a boy
on the smallest scale possible. I wanted to be an orphan." But history will not
let go, and as America is whipped into a deadly frenzy by demagogues, the Roths
and Jews everywhere begin to expect the worst.
In
The Plot Against America Philip Roth writes with a historical sweep and
lyrical intimacy that have rarely been so skillfully combined. As the novel
explores the convulsive collision of history and family, readers take a chilling
look at devastating events that could have occurred in America--and consider the
many possible histories existing beneath the one that actually happened.
Questions for Discussion
The discussion questions that follow are designed to enliven your group's
discussion of Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Roth's extraordinary new novel, The
Plot Against America.
- In what ways does The Plot Against America differ from conventional
historical fiction? What effects does Roth achieve by blending personal history,
historical fact, and an alternative history that might have happened?
- The novel begins "Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear" [p.
1]. With this sentence Roth establishes that his story is being told from an
adult point of view by an adult narrator who is remembering what befell his
family, over sixty years earlier, when he was a boy between the ages of seven
and nine. Why else does Roth open the novel this way? What role does fear play
throughout the book?
- How plausible is the alternative history that Roth imagines? How would the
world be different if America had not entered the war, or entered it on the side
of Germany?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
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