Since the beginning of creation and throughout the march of time, dictators and authoritarian rulers have always silenced all kinds of opposition in the name of patriotism and idealism in order to sustain the advantages they had procured through the gross abuse of power. This paper sheds light on the perspectives of fascism—considered in relation to the economic, social, political, and psychological conditions from which fascism springs—and showcases how Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here makes use of the medium of the novel to show that a faithful recording of history can and should serve as an indispensable counselor in civic behavior and state policy. The paper critically evaluates how Lewis's novel paints the devil of fascism in its true colors and convincingly proves his hypothesis as to why totalitarianism cannot find a foothold in America. Lewis's warning, against the backdrop of the 1930s, takes on a prophetic note, as liberal-minded Americans even today remain wary of demagogues who usurp power through democratic means and use the same power to perpetuate a totalitarian system of authority.

In advocating the policy of `Free Trade,' which implies free enterprise unrestrained by the control of any authority, Adam Smith declared his preference for a system of natural liberty as against the constraining spirit of monopoly. His philosophy of political economy strikingly resembles the `laissez-faire' system of economy, which has been an integral part of the American way of the "pursuit of happiness." If the laissez-faire doctrine, with its bias against State interference, helped America attain a position of unparalleled abundance, it had unpleasant aftereffects like increasing the gulf between the very rich and the underprivileged. With the rise of the Big Business, economic power was transformed into political power which extended to the control of men and to the mastery of the State. Towards the first quarter of the twentieth century, the American novelist was seriously engaged in denouncing the pitfalls of a capitalism backed by the laissez-faire idea. Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Sinclair Lewis, and others exposed the degradation of character in a decaying civilization based on commercialism and exploitation. The scene changed in the 1930s. Cataclysmic events like the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the advent of the Red God of Communism urged the American novelist to subject traditional concepts to the challenge of new situations. The haunting specter of fascism threatened the citadels of democracy, as did the menace of the `Red Scare' resulting from the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Ideologies related to communism, fascism, capitalism, imperialism, and consumer culture became viable material for fictional treatment. The present paper explores how Sinclair Lewis's prophetic novel contends with the looming threat of fascism on the expanding contours of American capitalism during the Depression era and also analyzes the safeguards implicit in American principles of democracy that would successfully contend with and contain such threats.

In December 1930, Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. The Swedish Academy credited Lewis with the beginning of a new great American literature of national self-criticism and praised his sociological approach to the primary concerns of life and literature, as portrayed through his best-sellers: Main Street, Babbit, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry. Lewis was hailed as a pioneer with the manner of a new settler who takes new land into cultivation. The award, however, outraged most of his fellow Americans who felt that in awarding the Nobel Prize to a person who had scoffed at the American institutions, the Nobel Committee and the Swedish Academy had insulted America. Notwithstanding the criticism leveled against Lewis for exposing the pettiness of the American bourgeoisie before the whole world and for his `jaundiced' opinions and `malicious' judgments in regard to the ideals cherished by the best citizens in America, Lewis's role as a champion of the freedom of the individual "average American" at a time of historical and political expediency placed him in the vanguard of literary politics in America. Viewing the inner strength of man against the external forces of social circumstances, Lewis sought to project the vital problems facing America between the two World Wars.

American Literature Journal, Political Economy, Cataclysmic Events, American Economy, American Capitalism, Bolshevik Revolution, American Literature, Democratic Principles, American Democratic Traditions, American Whites, International Crisis.