Libra
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Reality of how he was inside
Oswald's "Facade"
When I first thought of Lee Harvey Oswald, I thought of a shrewd, lone gunman when he assassinated John F Kennedy. Yet, when I read Libra, I saw a whole different person behind what i perceived. Reading about it made me question really how cold and calculated of a killer Oswald really was when I learn of his experiences. To me, I see a person that tries to act like this revolutionist that had just discovered something groundbreaking but in reality he's just a young man with a troubled childhood who may have had some learning deficiency. However, I think that the reason for being like that was because of the people around him, especially when he served in the army and he was only in his late teens surrounded by these grown adults. This environment caused him to try to "mature" himself by trying to be older, smarter and "wise beyond his years" as a mechanism. This is especially during and after his time in the Soviet Union where he tries to act like this intelligent, Karl-Marx type of communist man. During his time in the Soviet Union he would even end up marrying a woman and have a kid which, to me, makes it look like he's trying to "catch up" to the other older, 40+ year old men around him. I guess because of this, this sharpened my perspective on why I believed to be such a experienced almost prodigy-like figure when in reality, he just looked like a goof, especially with the videos that we had watched about him today (December 17th) in which he gave this nonsensical comments to the questions answered to him which, to me, was basically the destruction of his entire "maturing" facade. It shows a much more vulnerable side in Oswald, the equivalent to when a teenage child is caught doing something REALLY bad by their parents and they start questioning him. They try to look tough at first, but as the questions get more personal, they start to crack.
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Hi Elliot, thanks for posting this king. I liked your idea of how Lee is perpetually trying to catch up, even show off or perform maturity, to the older men he constantly surrounds himself with. He has a serious dark exterior, and a twisted but goofy interior.
ReplyDeleteThe novel implies in many ways that Lee HAS had to "grow up fast"--he's living on a Marine base in Japan by the time he's seventeen. And in his own misspelled, tormented autobiographical writings, when he is first crafting his public persona or "facade" for historical consumption, he describes his younger self as exhibiting "a far mean streak of indepence brought on by negleck" (or "mean streak of independence brought on by neglect"). Somehow the fact that he can only approximately spell both "independence" and "neglect" is sad and even sympathetic--none of this is an excuse for murder, of course, but it's not wrong to note how Lee's personality has indeed been shaped by neglect in his childhood. And that defiant sense of "independence"--of always thinking he's a step ahead of everyone else, pursuing his own secret plan--is also in evidence throughout.
ReplyDeleteThe pictures and captions made me laugh. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Lee takes himself too seriously, and I really like your point about this maybe stemming from the military. I think it's also interesting to note that Lee is capable of self-assessment of his past self and realizing that he's being melodramatic, as seen when he mocks himself in the Historic Diary "somewhere, a violin plays," indeed. Still, this was written in something that HE NAMED the Historic Diary.
It's even more disturbing to think that this very young, domrstically abusive, try-hard young man who bootstrapped himself up from poverty in the least-conservative friendly interpretation of the phrase was able to buy a gun and shoot the president with it while at work. Lee was not a good person, but he had his life ahead of him, and he could have, well, he could have tried to become a better husband (although given what we know of Lee that seems unlikely) and written stories about contemporary American life. Then again, violent crimes are (in 2023 at least) disproportionately committed by young people (bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/violent-incidents-victim-and-offender-age-2023), so I don't know, really.
Hi Elliot! I really like the two pictures comparing Lee's self image verses how he really is as a person. I thought your idea of how Lee is always trying to catch up and show maturity was interesting, as I really didn't think of his performativeness as an attempt to look mature, but it really does make sense. Great job!
ReplyDeleteHi Elliot! I really enjoyed your pictures. I also resonate with your point that Oswald's maturity is a facade that acts to defend himself (badly, apparently) against the older men in the military. He's used to being performative and acting, since he's always been the age-wise underdog of the marines. It's also unsettling how drastically someone can change the course of history with just a lone gun---something that's also relevant today, with recent shootings.
ReplyDeleteWhat's poppin twin. I think your image of Lee throughout reading Libra correctly portrays the misconceptions surrounding him and the persona that history has given to him. In the novel we see that his self image is one of superiority and inside knowledge, which at times can come off as foolishness in the face of certain people like the KGB. It's also essential to remember how old he actually is. No matter how mature he acts, he's still a "college kid" in his twenties. You've highlighted this well and I definitely agree that his strange responses in interviews are worth mentioning. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteW post from the goat. I like how you take into account that Oswald is a human like the rest of us, especially since Libra's gripping plot can sometimes carry me away to make him appear as the "cold, lone gunman" you describe. I also like your idea that Oswald maturing on his own as a coping mechanism of some sort.
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