Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald/Libra

As we're starting to get into Libra and piecing together who Lee Harvey Oswald was (at least in DeLillo's eyes), I think it's clear that the novel is going to give us a unique angle on his character.  In the Frontline documentary, they really emphasize Lee's position as an outcast, an emotionally distant and isolated misfit.  While this has a good deal of factual basis, and supports the "lone gunmen" theory for JFK's assassination, DeLillo's look at Lee's psyche is much more involved.  While both reconstructions depict Lee's political ideologies as being integral to the formulation of his identity, only Libra reveals that he is fundamentally not antisocial.  He loves to argue, to stand out, but more than that he aspires to be a leader and a symbol, just as Stalin and Trotsky were.

The documentary argues that Oswald's entrance into the Marines at age seventeen served as an escape from his home and a method for him to learn how to shoot a gun, at least suggesting that Lee already had plans to become an assassin, citing his robotic sharpshooting skills. In Libra however, Lee definitely seems out of place as a Marine, and also does not have any nefarious ambitions; even when he attempts treason, it is primarily motivated by his desire for his ideology to be taken seriously.  His relatable faults are clearly spelled out for us.

"[He] had conduct and proficiency ratings that climbed for a while, then fell, then climbed and fell again, and his scores on the rifle range were inconsistent" (82).

"He went to the movies and the library.  Nobody knew the tough time he had reading simple English sentences...When he was tired it was all he could do to spell five straight words right, to spell a single small word without mixing up the letters.  It was a secret he'd never tell" (83).

In his "befriending" of other soldiers in his camp, we see that perhaps Lee was not as emotionally and intellectually isolated as some would have us believe.  Somewhat ironically, the novel is exposing a conspiracy theory to the reader, implying that Lee Harvey Oswald was merely a pawn, but it is only in this picture of Lee that he is humanized to such a great extent.

A Children's Game

Kindred is unique as a novel depicting daily life in the early-1800s South not only in its use of fantastical elements such as time travel or teleportation, but in its relatively subtle motives.  Butler does not simply set out to write a novel which serves primarily to portray the horrors of slavery; as Kevin correctly (but insensitively) observes, the dehumanization and violence the slaves experience on the Weylin plantation are relatively tame.  "One [whipping] is too many, yes, but still, this place isn't what I would have imagined.  No overseer.  No more work than the people can manage..." (100). Butler does this not to take away from the oppression which they do experience, nor to lessen the importance of writing novels which immortalize past cruelties, but instead to focus on the power of slavery as a social force and context.  Butler emphasizes this with her creation of unique and morally ambiguous characters across the board, including Tom Weylin, Rufus, Kevin, and even Dana.

We've discussed in some length the disturbingly smooth transition that Kevin makes to becoming a slave master, which of course has profound implications for how we understand slavery's remnants both in the 1970s and today.  I think it is equally important to observe the changes that occur in the the most impressionable demographic: children.  Dana and Kevin observe children playing a "game", innocently imitating the buying and selling of slaves.  At one level this is simply children being children, learning from what the adults are doing without really understanding the gravity of their actions.  However I think this "game" is also indicative of the beginnings of a tragic coping mechanism where slaves internalize their racism and oppression.  Even Dana, who was born in a completely different social context, finds it harder and harder to hold onto her identity as the line between her acting is blurred with reality.  For those born into slavery who have no hope for a free future, resistance is suffocated by their survival instinct.