Oswald's Motivation

Before, I thought Lee was sort of deluded in the way he talked about himself within the scheme of something larger. He's always assuming things that aren't really there. For example, when he wants to write a book in Russia about his experiences, he's convinced that everyone is going to love it and find it significant. Similarly, he tends to say stuff that makes him seem very self-centered and grandiose. In my previous blog post, I used the following quote as an example:

Lee caught the general's eye and smiled as if to say, Bet you don't know who I am. Untouchable. He had his hand inside the jacket, gripping the stock of the .38, just to do it, to get this close and show how simple, how strangely easy it is to make your existence felt (376).

Here, Lee seems like he is actively seeking a role that will give him power and control. He sounds eager to just have the knowledge that he is capable of transforming the moment and impacting history forever. The thing is, though, that he doesn't actually act on his impulse to carry the gun with him to the lecture. It's like he likes knowing that he could do something if he wanted to so easily, and that's enough for him.

The passage starting on page 383 really changes the way I think about Lee's motivations, though: "Everything he heard and saw and read these days was really about him. They were running message into his skin." The last sentence of this quote especially makes it seem like things are passively happening to him, as opposed to him actively going out and actively seeking a role in the assassination plot. It sounds like there are pressures that are really affecting him. Maybe all that Lee ever wanted was for people to take him seriously--for him to be able to change something in a way that would be heralded as a person of importance.

Furthermore, there's the matter of fate and Lee's role in all of this; it's almost too easy to say that it's just fate that Lee happens to kill the president, yet that's what it seems like sometimes, because I don't really see him being very excited or even particularly willing to go through with the assassination. And of course, he does, but even in the first In Dallas November 22nd, we don't see Lee very enthusiastic about the whole thing.

JFK Assassination Footage

When I first watched the footage of JFK's assassination in class the other day, I had heard a lot about the different moments in the clip: his initial wave to the public, the first little duck (which was actually in response to the first shot), the second shot, and Jackie O climbing into the back of the car. Nothing could have prepared me for the actual moment, though. The first time, I winced...and the second, third, fourth, and fifth too. Watching something like that over and over never really seems to make it any more palatable. Even if I knew frame 318 (or at least, I think the second shot was around 318), was approaching, I was affected in more or less the same way. It also made me consider the role of fate in the book. The way it's structured really supports the idea that fate explains the way things transpired--that the whole Kennedy assassination can just be seen as an inescapable act of fate. The way in which the book's chapters are dates and places, culminating in the chapter for November 22nd gives the reader a sense of foreboding and fate; everyone knows basically what will happen, and yet, like in the footage, we're all still worried about how things will end up.

Meanwhile, Lee seems to be helping fate right along by continuing to think so highly of himself. For example, on page 376, after he takes his gun to the lecture Walker gives but doesn't actually shoot at him, he thinks,

Lee caught the general's eye and smiled as if to say, Bet you don't know who I am. Untouchable. He had his hand inside the jacket, gripping the stock of the .38, just to do it, to get this close and show how simple, how strangely easy it is to make your existence felt.

His frame of mind here seems to be leaning towards self-aggrandizement, and yet, he doesn't actually upon it. He seems to just like the knowledge that he is capable of altering the way a moment is structured forever. It's this mindset that makes him such a "good" Libra. He's just like a balance, and it's unclear which way he'll tip and when.

As a side note, on page 382, the last line before the break mentions the similarities between Kennedy and Lincoln's deaths. I happen to have a book (The World of Ripley's Believe it or Not!) that points out the similarities. It's CREEPY!

-Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was born in 1839. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939.
-Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who warned him not to go to the theater that night. Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, who warned him not to go to Dallas.
-Both were shot on a Friday.
-Both were shot from behind.
-Both wives were present.
-Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and ran into a warehouse; Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran into a theater.
-Both were succeeded by men named Johnson.
-Both Johnsons were Democrats from the South.
-The Johnson who succeeded Lincoln was born in 1808; the Johnson who succeeded Kennedy was born in 1908.
-Both presidents' names contain 7 letters; their successors names contain 13; their assassins have 15.

QUICK, someone right a conspiracy theory!

Lee a Libra

Here's my response to the following in-class prompt: What do you think about the title of the novel, Libra, and does Lee seem like a Libra?

I think the title of the novel is very apt; it is, after all, a book that focuses on the realm of possibility where things unforeseen or unplanned may happen. The whole idea of the conspiracy is that it's supposed to be well-mapped out, but we don't know yet how well it's going to work out. And the reason we don't know largely lies within one character: Lee. He has the power to decide what happens, as he's a gunman. The question then becomes which side of Lee--and there are two distinct sides--will win out when November 22nd rolls around. Lee can be careful and calculating, as we see when he has all of his information forged without being told to do so. He can be, "well-balanced, levelheaded a sensible fellow respected by all." On the other hand, he can be impulsive (for exampled, when he shoots himself in the arm). The fact that Lee has a lot of qualities that are paradoxical is really crucial to the whole idea of history as comprised of "lone facts." Facts can't paint a complete picture of an event; they're lonely because people are unpredictable to the core.