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.
1 comment:
Your description of Lee in these later chapters, as the plot starts to take on a momentum of its own, really fits with DeLillo's account of him as a "Libran"--the scales are tilting, and he's more or less passive.
The scene (entirely fictional, as far as I know, though plausible) where he brings the gun and lurks at the Walker thing is revealing: he likes the power that a "secret" gives him, the sense of knowing he's the guy who shot at Walker when no one else does. But there's no sense that he's actually inclined to try to shoot him again. Being in possession of the secret is enough. And as the plot moves toward the 22nd, we see something magnetic about simply being part of a plot, a controlled secret.
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