The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

Published 2004 · 140,525 words · about 15 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Literary Fiction, Alternate History, Political Fiction

How hard is The Plot Against America to read?

The Plot Against America scores 69 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 68 out of 100
Roth employs a sophisticated vocabulary, frequently using words like 'philatelist,' 'providential,' 'machinations,' 'vilification,' 'atavistic,' 'pugnacious,' 'entrepreneurial machers,' and 'inexplicably.' While the narrative voice often reflects a child's perspective, the authorial language elevates the text beyond simple contemporary fiction, akin to '2666' in its literary demands without being overly obscure like 'Ulysses.' The inclusion of Yiddish terms like 'machers' further adds to the specialized lexicon.
Sentence structure: 72 out of 100
The novel features notably long, complex sentences, often spanning multiple lines and incorporating extensive subordinate clauses and parenthetical asides. For instance, descriptions of the family's neighborhood or the historical context of Lindbergh's flight frequently involve multiple embedded details, demanding sustained reader attention. This hypotactic style, while not reaching the extreme lengths of Faulkner or James, significantly exceeds the accessibility of 'The Great Gatsby' and approaches the demands of 'In Search of Lost Time.'
Abstraction: 62 out of 100
While grounded in a concrete historical setting and a child's direct experience, the narrative frequently delves into abstract themes of fear, identity, political ideology, and the nature of history itself. The narrator's reflections on the 'unforeseen' and the 'terror of the unforeseen' elevate the personal story to a philosophical examination of fate and national consciousness. This blend of the concrete and the abstract places it above 'The Great Gatsby' but below the pure philosophical drama of 'Waiting for Godot.'
Information density: 70 out of 100
The text is dense with historical details, cultural references, and intricate character observations, requiring readers to process a significant amount of information per page. Roth layers descriptions of political events, family dynamics, and the narrator's internal struggles, often within single, extended paragraphs. This constant stream of interwoven facts and insights, from stamp collecting minutiae to political machinations, creates a demanding reading experience, comparable to '2666' in its layered complexity.
Narrative indirection: 58 out of 100
The narrative is a retrospective account from an adult Philip Roth, providing direct historical context and explicit statements about the family's fears. However, much of the emotional and psychological impact of the Lindbergh administration is conveyed indirectly through young Philip's limited understanding, his dreams, and the nuanced reactions of his parents, requiring readers to infer the deeper anxieties. This places it higher than direct exposition like '1984' (35) but less purely inferential than 'The Great Gatsby' (65).
Symbolic density: 83 out of 100
The text is rich with recurring symbolic motifs that carry significant thematic weight beyond literal events. Philip's stamp collection symbolizes his childhood innocence and the corruption of American ideals, while Alvin's lost leg represents the physical cost of fighting fascism and the family's personal suffering. The Washington monuments, initially symbols of American strength, become sites of vulnerability, underscoring the pervasive anxieties, making it denser than 'Heart of Darkness' (65) but not as abstract as 'The Waste Land' (98).
Ironic distance: 73 out of 100
The adult narrator's retrospective voice consistently creates a gap between young Philip's naive understanding and the grim reality of the Lindbergh administration. Characters like Rabbi Bengelsdorf, who believes he is 'koshering Lindbergh' for the Jews, are presented with profound dramatic irony, their self-deception clear to the reader. This sustained ironic commentary requires readers to constantly recalibrate meaning, akin to 'Lolita' (75) but with less moral ambiguity.
Resolution withholding: 72 out of 100
The excerpt concludes with the Roth family deeply immersed in the Lindbergh era's uncertainties, leaving Alvin's physical and emotional recovery unresolved and young Philip grappling with profound personal and national anxieties. The adult narrator's philosophical reflections on 'the unforeseen' emphasize the ongoing nature of historical and personal struggles, creating a strong sense of open-endedness regarding the family's ultimate fate and the political future, similar to 'Crying of Lot 49' (75).
Structural complexity: 62 out of 100
The narrative is a retrospective first-person account by an adult Philip Roth, consistently filtering events through his younger self's limited understanding while interjecting with mature commentary and historical context. This dual perspective creates a subtle but persistent layer of complexity, requiring readers to interpret the child's experience through the adult's lens. While largely chronological, this layered narration and the occasional internal, non-literal sequences, such as the vivid stamp dream, elevate its structural demands beyond a linear romance like 'Beach Read' (28) but less fragmented than 'Flights' (88).

How The Plot Against America is regarded

The Plot Against America holds a literary regard score of 74 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where The Plot Against America sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (270 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, The Plot Against America scores 68 out of 100. A second mythos, comedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.15. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
my father was thirty-nine, an insurance agent with a grade school education, earning a little under fifty dollars a week
Symbol: Formal
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
Mythos: Irony iv (irony iv)
The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.
Genre: Novel + Confession
Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.

Where the story of The Plot Against America takes place

  • Newark, New Jersey, 1940-1942, in an alternate America (1940 to 1942), the main setting
  • Weequahic, Newark, New Jersey, June 1940–October 1942 (1940 to 1942)
  • Lindbergh's Washington, D.C., and Mount Vernon, June 1941
  • Road to Danville, Kentucky, via Maryland and West Virginia, October 1942

5 things that are true of The Plot Against America, with the passage for each

  1. Lindbergh beats FDR with 57 percent of the popular vote and carries 46 states.

    Lindbergh got fifty-seven percent of the popular vote and, in an electoral sweep, carried forty-six states

  2. On the Washington trip the Roths are called 'Loudmouth Jew' twice in under 48 hours.

    Loudmouth Jew. And for the second time in less than forty-eight hours.

  3. Cousin Alvin loses his left leg below the knee fighting with the Canadian army.

    He lost his left leg below the knee and was seriously wounded in his right foot.

  4. Presidential candidate Walter Winchell is assassinated in Louisville, Kentucky, and the news interrupts a World Series broadcast.

    Presidential candidate Walter Winchell has been shot and killed.

  5. The October 1942 riots after Lindbergh's disappearance kill 122 Americans in a single night.

    By then 122 American citizens have lost their lives.

Scenes in The Plot Against America that Frye would name

46 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Confession, untitled
Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear. The retrospective, introverted autobiographical register is announced in the first line.
Pathos, untitled
Presidential candidate Walter Winchell has been shot and killed. The assassination of the people's champion is the book's public pathos scene.
Agon, untitled
Blood spattered the length and breadth of our imitation Oriental rug, blood dripping from the splintered remains of our coffee table The father-versus-ward fight turns the family living room into an arena.
Sparagmos, untitled
I looked down and I saw one foot backwards and one leg dangling. Alvin's account of his own mutilation in no man's land.
Anagnorisis, untitled
Yes, my father admitted, he had been wrong all along and Bess and the Tirschwells had been right Herman concedes the central family debate and decides to emigrate.
Hamartia, untitled
it was clear that my father’s refusal to listen to my mother and get us out of the country months before was the gravest mistake he’d ever made. The narrator names the error outright.

Books that share these scenes with The Plot Against America

About the author

Philip Roth