Summer 2001 |
Notes on Libra |
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[additional commentaries on Libra] Mike Rios Eng 7757 Dr. R. Nordquist Notes on Libra There is a scene in which Oswald has a conversation with his cellmate, Dupard, in Atsugi. Dupard tells Oswald the circumstances that put him (Dupard) in the brig: he set fire to his bed. But he says it’s not that simple. Oswald seems to understand, offering: "You’re not sure you really wanted to do it. You were just thinking about doing it…. It just seemed to happen while you were thinking it." Oswald could just as easily be speaking about himself and his role in the assassination of President Kennedy. Oswald, too, is thinking about doing "it," about doing something, anything, throughout the novel. From being a spy to becoming a Russian citizen to shooting General Walker, Oswald is forever thinking about doing something that will validate his existence somehow. And things are always happening while he is thinking. Why? Coincidence. Time and time again Oswald’s life merges or comes into contact with Everett and those who are planning to shoot the President without his meaning to do so. Is this the same coincidence that Everett speaks of when he ponders, "You have to leave them with coincidence, lingering mystery. This is what makes it real." (147)? Is there more than one type of coincidence? Everett seems to think so. He thinks that he can manufacture coincidence, or give the illusion of coincidence, and therefore manufacture reality. Does coincidence make or break reality? Can reality exist without coincidence? Is "coincidence" what Ferrie refers to in the following passage? Think of two parallel lines. One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self. It’s not generated by cause and effect like the other two lines. It’s a line that cuts across causality, cuts across time. It has no history that we can recognize or understand. But it forces a connection. It puts a man on the path of his destiny. (339) Time and place play significant roles in the novel, and in the investigation of the JFK assassination. Is history just time and place? Or is it time, space, and a third thing … coincidence? … luck? … chance? Is this why the chapter titles alternate between place (In the Bronx, In Dallas) and time (17 April, 22 November)? Is it true that "History means to merge" (101)? Reality is significant in the novel. Oswald clearly does not have a good grasp of reality. He seems to both fear it and misunderstand it. He also wants to escape it while trying to shape it as well. Everett also does not have a good grasp of reality, or rather, he is distrustful of reality. Reality to him is "eerie." Why? Is he disturbed by the "real world" because he does not know how to live in it? Or because he has seen that the real world can be manufactured? He has manipulated reality in the past, during agency operations, and plans to do so again with the assassination of JFK. So, given his insight into the pliability of reality, the unreality of reality in a sense, does Everett perhaps feel more secure in his secret manufactured world because he has power on this side of the world? If he steps into the other side, the real side, he will forfeit his power and be subject to those left controlling and shaping reality. Everett and a lot of the other players involved (from Ruby to Mackey) have more in common with Oswald than they think. Does the CIA really want Branch (a symbolic name for the many tributaries leading to and away from November 22?) to record history? Is history the same as reality? "The past is changing as [Branch] writes" (301). Why? How? Does Branch see things, the past, differently as he writes? Is his writing changing the past? Is the past forever changing? If so, why write down history? Why try and figure out something that will not stay fixed? Or is it we that are not fixed? Do we play any role in changing the past? Is the past changing as we read this novel? Do our view and understanding of the history surrounding the JFK assassination change in any way as a result of reading Libra? Does the novel make history clearer? Or does it make history confusing? No one seems to have ever truly understood Oswald. If the people who actually met him, who lived with him, who spent time with him, did not know him then how can we ever expect to understand him? Can we ask the same question of the JFK assassination? Or are people and history different? Can we understand history without understanding the people who shaped it? In the author’s note, DeLillo says, "[Libra] is a work of the imagination. While drawing from the historical record, I've made no attempt to furnish factual answers to any questions raised by the assassination. I've altered and embellished reality, extended real people into imagined space and time, invented incidents, dialogues, and characters. But because this book makes no claim to literal truth, because it is only itself, apart and complete, readers may find refuge here - a way of thinking about the assassination without being constrained by half-facts or overwhelmed by possibilities, by the tide of speculation that widens with the years." Does DeLillo succeed? Does he provide his readers a refuge? Do his readers escape the hold of speculation and coincidence and theory? Can readers get away from or put aside the reality they have come to know or believe (whether it be the reality of a lone gunman or the reality of conspiracy or any other) as they turn DeLillo’s pages? And what kind of refuge does DeLillo intend anyway? Wouldn’t this refuge be the same kind of power-hungry refuge that Everett seeks in his company work? In his secret world, where he can shape things? Is this the kind of refuge DeLillo wants us to seek in his novel? Does he want us to trade realities? To trade one form of reality, the real reality which we cannot control or even understand, for a manufactured reality? Or does DeLillo raise old and new questions instead? Do his readers turn the last page and close the book, so to speak, on the JFK assassination? Or do voices and names and faces linger in their heads? Do they continue to hear the fragile voice of a dangerous boy who wanted to make history? Do they continue to see the motorcade approaching Dealey Plaza? Do they continue to feel the cold Minsk air? _______________ |
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