Libra

3 Pages 727 Words

Libra

“He was just riding to ride.”(3) In Don DeLillo’s Libra a story is told. A story of chance. A story of one-man whose life is like the train that’s he is on. He rides just to ride. Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who shoot and killed John F. Kennedy. DeLillo has created a fictitious story out of the events related to the assignation of John F. Kennedy. DeLillo creates an elaborate charter out of Lee Harvey Oswald in order to show a “truer” Oswald, not just a picture of a killer. Oswald’s life was one of uncertainty and indecision. He had no direction from within himself; he believed that a higher force was controlling his life. Was it an outside force that directed the story of his life, or just pure chance? Chance is a powerful thing and I believe that it played a huge part in Oswald’s life. Chance was the train and he was just riding to ride.
Throughout the novel DeLillo tries to put us into the mind of Oswald. In the passage that starts on page 333 we see clearly through Oswald’s perspective, and what some would consider schizophrenia. DiLillo uses decontextualization to show how Oswald’s reality is based on chance. In one scene we see Oswald sitting on the floor of the Pain house with his Russian wife Marina watching Television. Oswald reminisces on all the major events that happened to him in the past and discovers that they all happened in October and November. His birthday, his enrolment in the Marines, his arrival in Russia, his attempted assignation on General Walker, among other things are all related through these two months. To Oswald this just couldn’t be chance. It has to have a deeper meaning. Another example is how Oswald ties his reality into John f. Kennedy’s life. “Brothers named Robert.”(371) This really meant something to Oswald; their brothers had the same name. He had a relation to the presiden!
t. They had something in common, even though it is something so small and trivial, it ...