My
last blog post of the year. I would like to dedicate this last post not
only to my final thoughts on Libra, but also on the course as a whole
and what I’ve learned. After all the novels we’ve read, and the multiple
discussions we’ve had over them, I can honestly say my perception of
historical fiction has changed significantly.
After reading through Lee’s entire life in Libra,
I almost feel sorry for Lee. With higher powers pressuring him to
complete his job, it feels as if Lee is being forced to kill Kennedy.
Throughout the novel, Delillo never clearly explains why Lee does it in
the first place. It certainly isn’t that Lee is seething with anger
towards Kennedy about anything. At one point, as the day of Kennedy’s
assassination approaches, he almost doesn’t seem to want to do it, as
seen when he tries to convince Marina to move. Some people in class even
brought up how Lee might’ve been destined to be the assassin.
Delillo
does a nice job of reminding us of how Lee, despite being accused of
this crime, is still just a human being. He’s been a try-hard and
failure most of his life (even during the assassination, he messes up by
missing one of the shots). Looking at most of the photos of Lee, he
doesn’t even look monstrous at all, but rather looks like an awkward,
scrawny man.
Ragtime, Mumbo Jumbo, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kindred, and Libra.
All of these books have definitely changed my definition of historical
fiction. Prior to the course, I always thought of historical fiction as
creating a fictional character and plot within an actual period of time
and place in history. But there is so much more to it. It can be like Slaughterhouse-Five and Kindred,
in which the author uses time travel or plays with the chronology of
the plot line in order to express some sort of message. It can also be
like Ragtime or Libra, in
which the author used more extreme creative liberties by using actual
historical figures, and writing their own stories around these
characters. There isn’t a definition of what the historical fiction
genre is, which is a good thing because this course definitely opened me
up to those various definitions. Sure, novels like Mumbo Jumbo and Libra were
difficult to comprehend, but when is history ever easy to comprehend.
There is so much that goes on in history behind the scenes that we don’t
know about that we need a historical fiction genre to poke around. We
need to let our imaginations run rampant in order to hypothesize and
learn more about those specific historical periods we’re learning about.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Zapruder film reaction
Reading
my other classmates blogs, I found several people posting their
reactions to the Zapruder film. One blog entry that I found really
interesting was Nikita’s. In hers, she talked about whether there was a
purpose in studying the conspiracies behind the Kennedy assassination.
“Regardless of the what kind of plotting you think led up to the
assassination, doesn't it all add up to the same thing? Won't the
Zapruder film always end in exactly the same way?”.
As cynical of a view of history it is, and this is something Nikita does recognize, I certainly see what she is talking about. As I was reading through Libra, I, like most readers, already knew what was going to happen. Kennedy was going to get shot, and that was that. No matter what the real conspiracy plot is, whether Lee was coordinating the assassination with anyone else or not, won’t it all end up with Kennedy’s death?
Every time I see the Zapruder film, I always notice Kennedy’s head jerking, the blood splattering, Mrs. Kennedy and the Secret Service agent jumping onto the car. I understand with the "Yes, this is what it looks like to get shot" idea, but it’s the mystery, along with the lack of evidence that makes the assassination so intriguing.
I’m glad Nikita brought this up because it is something that comes up in the back of my mind whenever I hear about these conspiracy plots about the Kennedy assassination or any other historical mystery. Yet, it is our own curiosity and imagination that drives us to learn more about the assassination, much like Nicholas Branch. I can see where the obsession comes from. It’s not hard to wonder how many shots were taken? who and why they did it? The Zapruder film just adds another twist to the JFK assassination.
As cynical of a view of history it is, and this is something Nikita does recognize, I certainly see what she is talking about. As I was reading through Libra, I, like most readers, already knew what was going to happen. Kennedy was going to get shot, and that was that. No matter what the real conspiracy plot is, whether Lee was coordinating the assassination with anyone else or not, won’t it all end up with Kennedy’s death?
Every time I see the Zapruder film, I always notice Kennedy’s head jerking, the blood splattering, Mrs. Kennedy and the Secret Service agent jumping onto the car. I understand with the "Yes, this is what it looks like to get shot" idea, but it’s the mystery, along with the lack of evidence that makes the assassination so intriguing.
I’m glad Nikita brought this up because it is something that comes up in the back of my mind whenever I hear about these conspiracy plots about the Kennedy assassination or any other historical mystery. Yet, it is our own curiosity and imagination that drives us to learn more about the assassination, much like Nicholas Branch. I can see where the obsession comes from. It’s not hard to wonder how many shots were taken? who and why they did it? The Zapruder film just adds another twist to the JFK assassination.
Russia and Communism
In
one of our prompts we wrote the for class, the question was about Lee’s
stay in Soviet Russia. I wrote about how it was almost out of this
world during the 1950s. He enjoys being out in the town as this exotic
American and has interesting American ways that women find exotic. This
is one example of his naivety and bloated sense of himself, which is
something I want to further delve into.
Let’s start from Lee’s childhood. Growing up poor, Lee wasn’t the sharpest student in school. In fact he was dyslexic. He had a hard time reading simple English sentences, and he had an even harder time writing. Yet, when he first started spending more time at the library, he wanted to read books “that put him at a distance from his classmates, closed the world around him” (p. 33) .This spurred him into reading up on Marx’s The Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital. As Dellilo describes Lee,
These readings seemed to be the start of Lee being a Communist idealist. Lee wants to use the Defector Program to his advantage in order to serve as a spy defect. He gives up his American identity and secrets in order to defect to the Soviet Union and provide them any information to help them against the United States. For the Soviets, it is just too good to be true. While he wants to gain the attention of the Soviets, many of them, who seem to like Lee, are also skeptical of who he really is. Alek, the official who interrogates Lee about how passionate he is towards Communism, and about any details to the U-2 spy plane, begins to like Lee. At the end of the “In Moscow” chapter, Alek even gives him Soviet citizenship and work in Minsk so that he can become the Marxist he wants to be. While Alek does like him, at the end of the “In Moscow” chapter, “he [Alek] would recommend that surveillance be maintained, indefinitely, wherever the boy was sent” (p. 167). While Lee is driven by his fanaticism as a Communist, in reality, his life begins to go down the drain, even to the point where he cuts himself. After marrying Marina and having a child, he is forced to return to the US with her.
During his stay in Russia, Lee also kept journal entries of his time in Russia in what he calls “the Historic Diary”. Even as his words are jumbled, and his writing is nothing more than childish, Lee imagined that people would read his works, and would be moved by his struggles, much like he was when he read Marx’s works in the library. He wanted people to be “moved by his loneliness and disappointment” (p. 211).
Throughout much of Lee’s early adult years, it is fairly clear how his passions muddle his sense of reality and make him into such an irrational person. As seen in Russia, it takes him years for him to see how the Soviets really thought of him. It is this sort of unstable and impulsive behavior that will cause him to President Kennedy. Delillo does an excellent job in providing the backstory to this sort of behavior.
Let’s start from Lee’s childhood. Growing up poor, Lee wasn’t the sharpest student in school. In fact he was dyslexic. He had a hard time reading simple English sentences, and he had an even harder time writing. Yet, when he first started spending more time at the library, he wanted to read books “that put him at a distance from his classmates, closed the world around him” (p. 33) .This spurred him into reading up on Marx’s The Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital. As Dellilo describes Lee,
“The
books were struggles. He had to fight to make some elementary sense of
what he read. But the books had come out of struggle. They had been
struggles to write, struggles to live. It seems fitting to Lee that the
texts were masses of dense theory, unyielding. The tougher the books,
the more firmly he fixed a distance between himself and others” (p. 34)
These readings seemed to be the start of Lee being a Communist idealist. Lee wants to use the Defector Program to his advantage in order to serve as a spy defect. He gives up his American identity and secrets in order to defect to the Soviet Union and provide them any information to help them against the United States. For the Soviets, it is just too good to be true. While he wants to gain the attention of the Soviets, many of them, who seem to like Lee, are also skeptical of who he really is. Alek, the official who interrogates Lee about how passionate he is towards Communism, and about any details to the U-2 spy plane, begins to like Lee. At the end of the “In Moscow” chapter, Alek even gives him Soviet citizenship and work in Minsk so that he can become the Marxist he wants to be. While Alek does like him, at the end of the “In Moscow” chapter, “he [Alek] would recommend that surveillance be maintained, indefinitely, wherever the boy was sent” (p. 167). While Lee is driven by his fanaticism as a Communist, in reality, his life begins to go down the drain, even to the point where he cuts himself. After marrying Marina and having a child, he is forced to return to the US with her.
During his stay in Russia, Lee also kept journal entries of his time in Russia in what he calls “the Historic Diary”. Even as his words are jumbled, and his writing is nothing more than childish, Lee imagined that people would read his works, and would be moved by his struggles, much like he was when he read Marx’s works in the library. He wanted people to be “moved by his loneliness and disappointment” (p. 211).
Throughout much of Lee’s early adult years, it is fairly clear how his passions muddle his sense of reality and make him into such an irrational person. As seen in Russia, it takes him years for him to see how the Soviets really thought of him. It is this sort of unstable and impulsive behavior that will cause him to President Kennedy. Delillo does an excellent job in providing the backstory to this sort of behavior.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Initial reactions to Libra
Libra reminded me a lot about Ragtime when
first reading it. Both authors, while using actual historical
characters, create their own worlds around these characters as they see
fit. While Doctorow plays around with the characters of J.P. Morgan and
Harry Houdini, Delillo plays around solely with Lee Harvey Oswald. Each
author uses actual events within these character’s lives, but fills in
the dialogue and emotions as they feel necessary. While what these
characters say may not be entirely true, who can actually prove that Lee
said such and such to someone at a certain time?
One thing I found particularly interesting when reading was how Delillo points out America’s obsession over Cuba. While many Americans think of it as an “idea”, deep down, it is simply their own economic investment in order to “free the country” from Communism (exploiting their labor and resources to make a profit). Cuba can also be seen as America’s need to control everything because once the Cuban Missile Crisis explodes, we not only have to worry for our economic interests, but also our security. It’s not that I haven’t learned about America’s economic interests in Cuba, but I always forget just how significant a factor it is in American relations with Cuba in 1960s.
I’ve been digressing a bit. The whole novel revolves around Lee Harvey Oswald, who Delillo portrays in an interesting light. According to the Warren Commission, Lee acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy, but with new evidence coming up about the assassination, it is all possible that Lee was part of a larger conspiracy. Delillo uses this idea in order to tell his own version of the story: how the assassination attempt is plotted by former CIA operatives, and is intentionally going to fail in order to force the government to start a war against Cuba. As mentioned before, considering the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, even if there isn’t solid evidence to prove that this kind of conspiracy didn’t happen, Delillo portrays it as a real one.
I would be lying to myself if I said that this novel is a brisk read. The prose and dialogue is quite dense, and there are so many plot lines and characters in the novel, mapping them out is quite the challenge (As mentioned in class, it’s almost like the scene in Slaughterhouse-Five where the anti-war novel’s plot is mapped out on the back of a huge sheet of paper with crayons. It’s all jumbled, and colors are flying everywhere, but it fits together in the end). That certainly doesn’t mean that the novel doesn’t capture my attention. I know that my points have been all over the place, so I’ll try to summarize everything up nicely. Delillo, from my initial reactions, does a nice job of portraying a potential conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. While he does add in his own ideas, he still sticks within the boundaries of historical fact. Describing Lee’s childhood and upbringing, it certainly does remind us that Lee, even if he was the assassin, was still a human being.
One thing I found particularly interesting when reading was how Delillo points out America’s obsession over Cuba. While many Americans think of it as an “idea”, deep down, it is simply their own economic investment in order to “free the country” from Communism (exploiting their labor and resources to make a profit). Cuba can also be seen as America’s need to control everything because once the Cuban Missile Crisis explodes, we not only have to worry for our economic interests, but also our security. It’s not that I haven’t learned about America’s economic interests in Cuba, but I always forget just how significant a factor it is in American relations with Cuba in 1960s.
I’ve been digressing a bit. The whole novel revolves around Lee Harvey Oswald, who Delillo portrays in an interesting light. According to the Warren Commission, Lee acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy, but with new evidence coming up about the assassination, it is all possible that Lee was part of a larger conspiracy. Delillo uses this idea in order to tell his own version of the story: how the assassination attempt is plotted by former CIA operatives, and is intentionally going to fail in order to force the government to start a war against Cuba. As mentioned before, considering the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, even if there isn’t solid evidence to prove that this kind of conspiracy didn’t happen, Delillo portrays it as a real one.
I would be lying to myself if I said that this novel is a brisk read. The prose and dialogue is quite dense, and there are so many plot lines and characters in the novel, mapping them out is quite the challenge (As mentioned in class, it’s almost like the scene in Slaughterhouse-Five where the anti-war novel’s plot is mapped out on the back of a huge sheet of paper with crayons. It’s all jumbled, and colors are flying everywhere, but it fits together in the end). That certainly doesn’t mean that the novel doesn’t capture my attention. I know that my points have been all over the place, so I’ll try to summarize everything up nicely. Delillo, from my initial reactions, does a nice job of portraying a potential conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. While he does add in his own ideas, he still sticks within the boundaries of historical fact. Describing Lee’s childhood and upbringing, it certainly does remind us that Lee, even if he was the assassin, was still a human being.
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