The Plot Against America

Alvin is discharged in January 1942 with a monthly stipend from the Canadian government. His uncle, Monty, a wealthy entrepreneur, tries to get him to stay in Canada, since he can’t bear the American president. Herman does not understand how Monty can support Lindbergh, for whom he previously felt only animosity. But Monty believes that he continues to proper because of Lindbergh’s peace, which avoided Roosevelt’s war. Sandy has come to believe in Lindbergh’s ideas as well, thanks to his time on the farm. Philip begins to wonder if his father knows what he is talking about. 

The family goes to pick Alvin up at a train station. Philip is nervous about Alvin’s missing leg, but his mother tells him not to be afraid. A Red Cross nurse pushes Alvin’s wheelchair off the train and begins heading towards them. Sandy runs to hug him and then Philip does the same, “only to discover how rotten he smelled” (127). Alvin stares at Herman with what Philip calls “ferocity” (127). Philip thinks he has never seen anyone look so sickly and dejected. 

Alvin’s left pants leg is empty. He is not wearing the leg because he says the stump broke down. Philip remembers a man from the neighborhood—a man with no legs—that everyone had always called Little Robert. Philip thought of him as the “living stump” (128). When it’s time to get Alvin’s baggage, Alvin won’t let the nurse push him. He hops away from her. She says she has never seen anyone as angry as him in all her time in the Red Cross. She says he is angry “at how things turn out” (130). 

Philip rides the bus with his mother on the way home and she asks what’s bothering him. She says that Alvin feels ashamed because he wants to be seen as strong and independent. Philip only asks questions about the stump: “Do I have to look at it? Will I ever have to touch it? Are they going to fix it?” (131). He is nervous because Alvin will be sharing his room. She offers some suggestions for other places where he might sleep, like the sun parlor, but he says no. He begins to imagine that he is following someone as he studies the other people on the bus. He realizes that his mother looks Jewish and thinks, “But then so must I, who so strongly resembled her. I hadn’t known” (134). 

Alvin smells bad because he has lost nineteen of his teeth and the decay is obvious. A dentist fixes them with inlays in the first couple of months, but it’s still the stump that bothers Philip. When Alvin had said the stump was broken down, he meant that it is rotting and covered in sores, because the artificial leg was fitted badly. On their fourth night together, Philip makes himself look at the stump. Alvin shows him how he has to bandage it and says that healing will take “forever” (137), which makes Philip feel panicked. 

The next day, Philip comes home and finds himself alone in the house. He gets Alvin’s bandages and imagines bandaging his own legs. He realizes that a scab from Alvin’s stump is stuck to his leg and runs to the bathroom, gagging. Then he hides in the cellar, which usually terrifies him. One week later, he takes over bandaging Alvin’s stump, and is able to fit it better than Alvin was. The first time he sees the prosthetic leg, he sees it as “horrible and a wonder both” (142). One day, Alvin tells Philip to get a football so they can play. They don’t have one, so Philip walks down various streets until he finds a football in a driveway and steals it. They throw the ball all afternoon. 

In the month since his return, Alvin’s mood is improving and he is gaining weight: “There was more each morning for a boy who worshiped him to worship, and what there was to pity was a little less impossible to bear” (144). Philip realizes that he spends most of his time thinking about how to help Alvin forget about his prosthesis. He has the idea to have a seamstress install zippers on the sides of Alvin’s pants, which makes slipping them over the leg easy. Alvin gives Philip his military valor medal as a thank you. 

Sandy is miserable because of the “hostile indifference Alvin evinced toward him” (145), even though everyone avoids speaking of OAA around Alvin. He believes that Alvin sensed that Sandy’s loyalties had changed, and that “the first one to welcome him home at the train station had also been the first to sign on with the fascists” (146). 

One afternoon, Philip comes home and Alvin is not there. Then he hears moans from the cellar and goes to the top of the stairs. He sees Alvin looking out of a small window at the street. He is watching high school girls and masturbating, but Philip thinks he is moaning because of his anguish over the lost leg. He runs outside and wonders if he should run away. Later, when he comes back inside, he goes into the cellar and sees Alvin’s semen on a wall. He thinks it is “something that festered in a man’s body and then came spurting from his mouth when he was completely consumed by grief” (148). 

Uncle Monty visits and is the first person to ask Alvin how he lost his leg. Alvin tells him that in France, while waiting for a boat, they got in a fight. He shot a German who then screamed all night. When he stopped screaming, Alvin crawled over to look at him. The German was dead. Alvin then shot him twice in the head and spit on him, when someone threw a grenade that exploded close enough to damage his legs. His men came and dragged Alvin away. Monty asks if it might have been thrown by one of his own men and Alvin doesn’t answer. Monty then asks Alvin if he’s just going to live off of everyone else for the rest of his life or if he wants a job at the market. Monty tells Alvin that every mistake has made—spitting on the dead German, quitting on Abe Steinman—is because he’s a professional misfit: “There is nothing you have earned” (152). He says he is only there because of Alvin’s father and grandmother, then he leaves.