1932 Washington Bicentennial stamps

The 1932 Washington Bicentennial stamps are a twelve-stamp commemorative set in Philip’s collection, remembered in a dream as both a carefully ordered object and a surface overwritten by political menace. Their transformation preserves the stamps’ recognizable design while replacing their subject, making the familiar collection register the imagined reach of authoritarian power.

The Set and Its Design

The set comprises twelve stamps, ranging in denomination from a half-cent dark brown to a ten-cent yellow. In the dream, their colors, regulation size, and individually designed portrait frames remain unchanged. The wording across the top also survives: United States Postage remains legible in white-faced Roman lettering, spaced across one or two lines. These details preserve the set’s identity even as its central image is displaced.

The Dream’s Alteration

Philip dreams that he is carrying his stamp album to Earl’s when, fleeing a pursuer, he drops it at the sidewalk where the boys regularly play the “I Declare War” game. He checks the album for stamps that may have come loose from their hinges and opens to the 1932 set. Instead of the different portraits of Washington, every stamp now bears the same portrait of Adolf Hitler. The name Washington has likewise disappeared from the ribbons beneath the portraits; each ribbon now carries Hitler’s name, whether its design curves downward, curves upward, or runs straight with raised ends.

Political Meaning and Contrast

The change is disturbing precisely because it does not remake the stamps from scratch. Their denominations, colors, frames, and printed heading endure, while the figures and names that give the series its commemorative subject have been supplanted. The dream makes the album’s orderly, collectible images register a sudden seizure of national representation: familiar American designs remain visible, but their identity has been overwritten.

The alarm extends beyond the 1932 set. When Philip turns to the facing page, the 1934 National Parks stamps bear black swastikas across their depictions of American landscapes. That image widens the dream’s threat from the replacement of a historical figure to the marking of the country’s preserved natural places. The stamps’ small, fixed frames become a compact measure of the dream’s political horror: even what appears stable and carefully preserved can be made to display a hostile emblem.