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!
1 comment:
This stuff is bizarre, though, isn't it? I mean, no one would claim there's any "conspiracy" here (by whom? who is even in a position to orchestrate events a hundred years apart? and for what possible reason?), and yet, aren't these coincidences, in sum, kind of mind-blowing? There's a strong inclination to read something into it. And Ferrie articulates this tendency in the novel--and it's not totally unrelated to discourses like astrology. The appearance of a pattern or a symmetry suggests design, even if we can't possible fathom whose.
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