Lee Harvey Oswald: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

*NOTE: This post was written while listening to the soundtracks of the National Treasure films. Be warned that examples of inane, US History-centered conspiracy theories will make up the gist of this post. Please enjoy the little tidbit above. These obviously can't all be random coincidences...something's obviously going on.*

*SIDENOTE: While this post is somewhat inspired by the National Treasure films, there will be no Disney special effects. There may be a hyperlink at some point. That's the closest I get. Also, there will be no Nicholas Cage. Sorry for getting your hopes up.*

Anyways...there's a lot which we supposedly know about Lee Harvey Oswald. Dude shot and killed JFK, ran away, got arrested and was shot and killed by Jack Ruby before there was a trial. With the lone gunman dead, all traces back towards a cause/motive are eliminated, and we know little to nothing about what transpired with the assassination, and why it happened. In fact, most people don't know a whole lot about Oswald, prior to that fateful November day in Dallas. Heck, I've read a lot on the JFK assassination and the various conspiracies and what not, but I knew little to nothing of his prior life before I read Libra, by Don DeLillo.

DeLillo constructs a unique, creative narrative in which Oswald is merely a pawn in an extremely complex plot by two former CIA operatives, who aim to cause a war between Cuba and the US following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, by creating an intentional near-assassination attempt to be pinned on the Cuban intelligence agency. Additionally, in the course of word breaking on the attempt, the operatives hope that the CIA's role in attempted assassination attempts on Fidel Castro enter public knowledge, helping discredit the agency. It's an incredibly complex plot, with new elements and characters being introduced in seemingly every chapter.

So far, we're not sure how Oswald factors in exactly to their plot...the CIA knows of Oswald, and thinks he may be potentially useful, based on his Communist digressions (Oswald defected to Russia, before coming back to the US), and experience in the military (though his shooting records are less than clear, with both great and poor marks coming up, along with an incident where he "shot himself in the left arm with a sidearm" (DeLillo, 92) ). However, as the operatives want to pin the assassination on the Cubans, I'm unsure about how they plan on fitting Oswald into that role, since having Communist leanings doesn't seem like a strong enough case.

Anyways, the point I'm making is that DeLillo crafts a uniquely deep portrait of Oswald, more three-dimensional than many of the narratives, photos and videos that we see of him, or based on him. DeLillo goes back through time, piecing together facts from Oswald's tough childhood, growing up with numerous fathers through various marriages, but never really having a father figure he can look up to, through his troubled military service and into the assassination. Sometimes, I've stopped and hesitated while reading, and a Google search or two proves that a seemingly minor detail in the narrative is indeed factual. This contrasts with the other postmodern novels we've read, where the authors constructed a shell of fact which they built off of to create their fictional narrative. Rather, DeLillo creates a web of interweaving facts (with regards to Oswald, that is...for all we know, DeLilllo's JFK conspiracy narrative is completely fictional...or is it? We'll see in 2017 when pretty much the rest of the documents regarding the assassination are released.), and then adds fiction into these facts, creating a narrative that seems to be fictional, despite the fact that DeLillo's central character, Oswald, is based so heavily in fact.

Despite the fact that we're already 150 pages into the novel, I think we've just dipped our toes into the conspiratorial waters of this novel, and I'm loving it. As an avid history enthusiast (especially of the presidents), I love reading JFK conspiracy theories, and this is one that stands alone from all others, suggesting that the CIA unintentionally killed him. I can't wait to see what DeLillo does in the rest of the novel, and the plot will undoubtedly become even more complex before we're able to completely comprehend it, if we're ever able to.

MJ, over and out.

Surprise, Nicholas Cage does show up!

MJ, over and out. For real this time.

EDIT: Somebody pointed out that the original conspiracy image was a meme. There are many correlations, but that one is only partially true. Some are BS. Use your better judgement. I was duped!

A better version...

And some wise words from Abe Lincoln himself...

MJ, over and out. For the last time.

Not Your Everyday Time Travel

In Kindred, Octavia Butler constructs a unique method in which time travel occurs: there is no DeLorean, no TARDIS, no futuristic watch. Time travel just happens. And we, as readers, are immediately thrown into this sudden occurrence of time travel, without rhyme or reason.

Take into account the opening of the first chapter, "The River": "...I began to feel dizzy, nauseated. The room seemed to blur and darken around me...I heard him move toward me, saw a blur of gray pants and blue shirt. Then, just before he would have touched me, he vanished."

We don't know why Dana is time travelling, nor does she. And as we find out, Dana seems to go back in time whenever Rufus, a distant ancestor of hers, finds himself in trouble. Dana also realizes that Rufus must have a child, Hagar, with Alice in order for her family lineage to go as planned, and for her to be born in the first place. Kinda like what happened in Back To The Future, though sans DeLorean/mad doctor/skateboards/what not. Oh well...though a DeLorean would be cool.

By constructing a time travel based in something that is largely unknown, to which there's only a vague reason behind it that we can comprehend, the novel manages to avoid one of the defining factors in most novels involving time travel: the science fiction behind the time travel mechanism. By doing so, Butler is able to focus a lot more on the development of characters, across time periods, as well as the historical plot and background of 1800s Maryland. In fact, despite being a time travel novel, Kindred comes across to me as more historical fiction than science fiction, a rarity in time travel novels. Heck, I don't know of a single time travel novel which I would classify as not being a sci-fi.

The nature of Dana's time travel also creates an interesting perspective through which Dana lives in the 1800s. Since Dana knows that she will return to the modern day if she finds herself in danger of being killed, many of the risks that she, as a black woman, would have in those times are either nullified or greatly lessened in their impact. She will not be killed as punishment, and if it seems possible that she might die, she returns. Similarly as we see in the end of "The Storm", Dana also has the power to bring herself back to the present by trying to kill herself, as seen when she slashes her wrists. This gives her, as Jonah mentioned in class, a sort of privilege that other blacks in Maryland at the time lacked, the ability to get away free from many of the punishments and hardships that others faced.

Then again, time travel novels have twists...and it wouldn't surprise me to see a twist in the end of this novel, ending up with Dana getting stuck in the past or something along those lines...maybe once Hagar is born, her danger/Rufus' dangers are irrelevant, and she's stuck wherever she is? We don't know. We can't use what's happened to certainly predict what will happen in the future, and it's quite possible that what ends up happening may not be like how it's happened in the past (Click this link for an example of that playing out.). We'll have to wait and see, and I think that Butler does something with the novel's time travel dynamic to shake it up a bit in the end, considering its unpredictable nature from the beginning.