Herman Roth

Herman Roth is a Newark insurance agent, husband to Bess Roth, and father to Philip and Sandy Roth whose response to Lindbergh’s presidency gives the novel’s political crisis its intimate, domestic stakes. He insists that Jewish Americans belong in the country and should resist being driven from it, even as government pressure and antisemitic violence make that insistence harder to sustain. His story is one of principled resistance under strain: the man who refuses to yield his family’s home must also face conflict inside it and undertake a perilous journey to bring a bereaved child back to safety.

Identity and Background

In June 1940, when Charles A. Lindbergh is nominated for president, Herman is thirty-nine and earns just under fifty dollars a week as an insurance agent. His grade-school education and modest income support a household whose bills are paid, but leave little surplus. Bess manages the family budget with care, and their sons, Sandy and seven-year-old Philip, are growing up in Newark’s Weequahic neighborhood. Herman’s circumstances make his later resistance concrete: he is not a public official or a wealthy man insulated from consequences, but a working father whose family depends on his income and judgment.

Before the political crisis reaches their doorstep, Herman teaches his sons to meet challenges by accepting responsibility and learning on the job. When a promotion would require him to move the family to Union, however, he declines it. The decision costs him an opportunity he had wanted, but he judges the assignment itself to be untenable: he would have to manage an office where many employees were hostile to the prospect of a Jewish supervisor. Rather than ask his family to relocate into a position that would leave him isolated and exposed, he stays in Newark. His choice puts a limit on his own career while preserving the family’s home and community.

Resistance to Lindbergh’s America

Herman understands the president’s political alignment as a direct danger to Jews. After the family is evicted from the Douglas Hotel, he tells Verlin M. Taylor that their Jewish identity is the reason for the eviction and describes Lindbergh as a friend of Adolf Hitler. He invokes Walter Winchell’s public questions about what the president and Hitler agreed to, treating the unanswered possibility of an agreement about American Jews as a matter of urgent public concern. His alarm is not abstract: government and private discrimination have already narrowed Jewish opportunities, and the eviction makes that vulnerability immediate.

At a family dinner, Herman confronts Lionel Bengelsdorf over the Office of American Absorption. He argues that Hitler’s conquest of Europe, war against Russia, and bombing of London show why Lindbergh’s confidence in an understanding with Hitler cannot be trusted. He fears that Hitler’s persecution of Jews will eventually reach the United States and that the president will not defend them. Bengelsdorf answers that the office is meant to draw Jews further into national life, distinguishing it from the Nuremberg Laws. Herman remains unconvinced, telling the rabbi that the explanation intensifies rather than allays his fear. The disagreement is not simply over policy language: to Herman, an invitation to assimilate under a friendly-sounding program cannot make the government’s political alignment safe.

His opposition also shapes decisions inside the family. When Sandy becomes a recruiter for Just Folks and is invited to the White House, Herman tells him that the administration’s association with Joachim von Ribbentrop is reason to stay away. He warns that Sandy does not understand the Nazi officials or the history behind their claims, and forbids him from attending. Sandy calls him a dictator; Herman does not strike his son, but leaves for work in disgust. Bess, alarmed by Sandy’s defiance and the danger of his choice, intervenes physically and insists that he obey. The exchange shows how a national conflict enters family life: Herman’s attempt to protect his son is experienced by Sandy as an attack on his independence, while the family’s usual rules of affection and discipline become harder to maintain.

Family, Work, and Belonging

Herman’s protectiveness extends to Alvin Roth, his nephew, whose return to the household brings both care and friction. As the Federal Bureau of Investigation questions members of the family, Herman grows angry at Alvin’s conduct and at the scrutiny directed toward his wife and sons. He objects that Alvin has chosen his own path and resents the disruption and risk it brings into their home. His anger is mixed with concern: he wants Alvin to work or go to school, while Bess recognizes the bitterness Alvin feels about his lost leg. Herman’s resolve to protect the household can become harsh, particularly when he sees Alvin’s choices as exposing the whole family to further pressure.

He likewise rejects the idea that Jewish families should respond to danger by leaving the country. When Bess raises the possibility of following the Tirschwells to Canada, Herman argues that antisemitic forces want Jews to become so exhausted that they leave. He points instead to the courts, the ballot box, and public officials he believes will uphold the law, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia. Bess doubts that voters will reverse the political direction of the country. Herman asks her to wait until the November election before deciding what to do. His faith in American institutions is not confidence that the danger is imaginary; it is his reason for staying to oppose it.

Herman gives that attachment a personal history when he tells Mr. Cucuzza that he was born in Newark in 1901, has paid rent, taxes, and bills on time, and has never cheated an employer or the federal government. He says he believes in and loves the country. Mr. Cucuzza responds that he, too, considers it the best country and contrasts it with life under Mussolini. Their brief exchange places Herman’s patriotism in a shared, immigrant neighborhood rather than in abstract slogans. For him, belonging rests on a life of work and civic responsibility, and that lived claim is precisely what the country’s political turn puts in doubt.

Crisis and Change

As the family’s circumstances worsen, Herman gives up insurance work and takes a job at Uncle Monty’s market. He works overnight, returning home in the morning to eat and sleep before going back in the late afternoon. Farmers arrive with produce in the evening; grocers, restaurant owners, and others buy through the night. Sometimes Herman drives to farms in Passaic and Union counties to bring produce back himself. The schedule is exhausting, and his new routine changes the rhythm of family life: Philip must keep quiet when he comes home from school so as not to wake his father. Herman’s sacrifice is practical rather than ceremonial, a way to keep earning as the political emergency places additional demands on the household.

When Alvin returns from Philadelphia, he brings gifts for everyone: an apron for Bess, a sketchpad for Sandy, a Phillies cap for Philip, and a certificate for a free lobster dinner for four for Herman. The presents briefly make the family seem reunited. But Herman confronts Alvin over his apparent withdrawal from the danger facing Jews, and Alvin answers that he lost his leg fighting when Herman had sent him to do so. Their argument turns into a violent family confrontation. The episode reveals the cost of Herman’s guardianship: his determination to guide and protect Alvin has not made Alvin’s character conform to his hopes, and Alvin understands that guidance as a demand he paid for bodily.

Herman’s own body bears the pressure of the crisis. After violence and political disorder spread, he undertakes a round trip of roughly fifteen hundred miles to bring Seldon Wishnow back from Kentucky. At forty-one, Herman is too old to be drafted, and the dangerous drive becomes, in the narrator’s comparison, his nearest experience of a soldier’s fear, fatigue, and physical hardship. He makes the journey wearing a steel neck brace, with broken ribs, a sutured facial wound, and broken teeth, and carries Mr. Cucuzza’s spare pistol for protection. He drives the seven hundred and fifty miles to Kentucky with few stops, sleeps for five hours at the Mawhinneys’ home, and starts back with Seldon, who is sick and feverish. The return takes three times as long as the outward journey; Seldon’s illness and repeated car breakdowns make the trip a prolonged test of endurance.

Narrative Role and Significance

Herman’s arc links political belief to costly acts of care. He refuses a promotion rather than enter a hostile workplace, challenges Bengelsdorf rather than accept reassurance from an administration ally, and opposes his son’s participation in the White House visit even when that opposition damages their relationship. His faith in the law and in elections remains in tension with Bess’s fear that the family may have run out of time. Neither position is presented as an easy answer: staying is an act of belonging and resistance, but staying also leaves the family exposed.

The later crisis makes the gap between principle and protection impossible to ignore. Martial law follows the disappearance of Lindbergh, while false reports and antisemitic conspiracy claims help turn Jewish communities into targets. La Guardia denounces the blood-libel story and the accusations that Jews instigated the riots; the account of the violence confirms the lethal consequences of such manufactured blame. Against that background, Herman’s earlier insistence that the family remain in the country acquires a sharper cost. His journey for Seldon does not resolve the political catastrophe, but it gives his convictions a final, practical form: he places his own injured, exhausted body between a child and the dangers of the road. When Lindbergh’s policies are discredited, Wheeler disgraced, and Roosevelt returns to the White House, Herman is too old for military service. The rescue drive has already brought him as close as he will come to the front lines.