On Tyranny Literary Elements

Nonfiction, political philosophy

Snyder writes of the 20th century from the vantage point of 2024 and looking forward to a possible future in tyranny in America

Third-person

Tone: serious, grave, urgent
Mood: ominous, apprehensive, worried

Protagonist: Those who will stand up against tyranny. Antagonist: Tyrants and those who abet him in all capacities.

Will America be able to learn from Europe's examples of fascism and communism in the 20th century and avoid a similar fate of a tyrant taking over its democracy?

This is not a novel so there is no traditional climax. However, Snyder writes of climactic moments that people don't necessarily realize are climaxes and which instead represent a beginning of the end, or a shift from one thing to another. Examples include the Reichstag fire and perhaps the assault on the Capitol in 2020.

As this is not a novel, there is no traditional use of foreshadowing. However, Snyder's whole argument is that we have to interrogate history in a meaningful way in order to preclude a tyrannical leader from taking over. There may be moments in our recent history that could, if viewed in a literary way, hint at an inevitable future that contains the demise of our democracy.

1. "It is not patriotic to try to end democracy" (113).
2. "Some German Jews voted as the Nazi leaders wanted them to in the hope that this gesture of loyalty would bind the new system to them. That was a vain hope" (25).

1. Stanley Milgram and the Milgram Experiment, which taught us that subjects would follow people's instructions even if it hurt someone else (20-21).
2. The "hero of a David Lodge novel says that you don't know, when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time" (28) is a reference to the novel "Therapy."
3. The proverb "where annual elections end, tyranny begins" (30) is from Federalist Paper #51.
4. Rosa Parks, the great Civil Rights figure from 1950s America (51).
5. Snyder references two great works of fiction, Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" and George Orwell's "1984" to show how they were already warning of screens, suppression, etc. (61).
6. Bible verses: "eye of the needle" is Matthew 19:23-24; "abased/exalted" is Matthew 23:12; and "truth/free" is John 8:32 (63-64).
7. "Sleepy Joe" is a reference to the nickname Donald Trump gave President Joe Biden (67).

This is not a novel, so the imagery is not fashioned in order to limn a character or establish a setting; instead, since it is a work of nonfiction the evocation of collapsing democracies, protests, death camps, monomaniacal leaders, fake news, paramilitary groups, and more serves to impress upon the reader the gravity of the situation facing America right now.

1. "With arguments like this, German lawyers could convince themselves that laws and rules were there to serve their projects of conquest and destruction, rather than to hinder them" (39).

Snyder does not use parallelism at the level of the text—i.e., in the actual language he uses to tell his tale—but he does use it in an argumentative way to suggest that what happened in Europe in the 20th century is now paralleled in what is happening to the United States today.

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1. "History can familiarize, and it can warn" (11).