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.
Your comments also suggest that this historical fiction has had some impact on the way you view history--or the possibility for "accurate," airtight, thoroughly fact-based reconstruction of the past--as well. As you note, the fiction both dramatizes what is known *and* how much may never be known (in the factual/verifiable sense).
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