The narrator—named Philip Roth—says that “no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn’t been president or if I hadn’t been the offspring of Jews” (1). Lindbergh was nominated in June of 1940 when Philip was in third grade. He describes their neighborhood as a happy place, where most families were Jewish. The majority of the men in the neighborhood owned their own small businesses and worked long weeks. Philip’s father was a salesman. There are no outwardly religious Jews that Philip knows; he sees the Jews as more identified through their work, than their religion: “Our homeland was America” (4). 

Lindbergh had been a hero in the neighborhood. He completes his thirty-three hour solo flight in the Spirit of St. Louis on the same day that Philip’s mother learns she is pregnant with Phillip’s older brother, Sanford Roth, who will be called Sandy. In March 1932, Lindbergh’s baby is stolen from its crib and found dead in the woods weeks later. By the time Bruno Hauptmann is convicted of the crime in February 1935, “the boldness of the world’s first transatlantic pilot had been permeated with a

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now