The red flag

The red flag is a contested political expression in the novel: it signifies revolutionary solidarity in one register, while hostile public language turns it into shorthand for anarchic menace and a target for violence. Its meaning emerges through sharp contrasts between the international movement it evokes and the efforts to stigmatize or suppress those associated with it.

Emblem and Accusation

In a newsreel-like sequence, a public warning treats the display of the red flag in city streets as emblematic of unbridled license, hostility to law, and anarchy. The expression is not presented there as a neutral description. It belongs to a language of alarm that makes visible dissent appear inherently dangerous, collapsing a political sign into an accusation against those who display it.

That framing is countered by the sequence’s revolutionary imagery. The Marseillaise of 1905, Onward Christian Soldiers of 1912, the passivity of American Indians, and infantrymen waiting for death at the front are gathered into the vast sound of The Internationale. The juxtaposition places revolutionary hope amid older political songs, imposed silence, and the suffering of war. The red flag’s significance consequently exceeds the accusation attached to it: it points toward a collective movement capable of taking up histories and voices that the hostile account would reduce to disorder.

From International Solidarity to a Target

The passage identifies Paxton Hibben as a believer in a new world, then follows the consequences of that belief back in America. After a photograph shows him laying a wreath on Jack Reed’s grave, people try to expel him from an organization. At his twentieth college reunion, classmates put a noose around his neck. The fragmentary cry “lynch the goddam red” makes the color itself a mark of political identification and threatened violence. The revolutionary emblem and the insult converge: those called red are not merely argued against but presented as people who can be driven out or physically attacked.

The expression’s political stakes are also legible beside the novel’s scenes of labor organizing. Textile strikers gather at a meeting barred by mounted police; Ben Compton is dragged away while speaking, and Webb Cruthers later addresses a crowd outside. At a picket line, the police break up the strikers, and a young woman is kicked in the face before Daughter is arrested for striking a policeman. These scenes do not show a red flag being displayed, but they establish the terrain on which radical politics is contested: workers’ meetings and speech meet organized force, while dissenters’ actions are vulnerable to being represented as threats to order.

A Sign Under Surveillance

The same conflict recurs in the account of Ben Compton’s organizing. At the Empire Casino, a meeting intended to send greetings to Russia’s workers is watched by federal agents taking notes; police close the doors, and soldiers and sailors enter the gallery. After Ben speaks against a war he describes as serving bankers and munitions makers, the police converge on the platform and arrest him. The red flag is not named in this episode, but the surveillance and suppression echo the earlier struggle over who may be classified as a radical and what political speech will be tolerated.

When offered release from the immediate charges in exchange for reporting for military training, Ben says he will continue opposing the war until he is arrested again. He is released on bail under Morris Stein’s assurance that he will not agitate before trial, and the Steins do not tell him who supplied the money. This episode gives the expression a lived political context: being marked as red carries consequences, while continued dissent depends on relationships and resources that the authorities cannot entirely control.

The Expression’s Double Force

The red flag thus moves between incompatible readings. The newsreel’s denunciation makes it an emblem of lawlessness; the revolutionary sequence folds it into an international chorus; the attack on Paxton Hibben turns red into a label attached to a person whose beliefs expose him to expulsion and lynching. The novel does not settle the expression’s meaning by definition. Instead, it shows how political power struggles to fix the sign as a threat, while the movements and acts of solidarity it is meant to discredit keep its promise of collective change in circulation.