Who is Lee?

Who is Lee Harvey Oswald? This is a question that we are just starting to get an answer to as we start this book. Our initial picture of him is not a particularly nice one. Delillo paints him, rightly, as an angsty teenager. He is rebellious against his mother and talks back to her. He skips large amounts of school and takes pride in doing so. He also just seems to be an annoying kid, touting his reading of Socialist Work’s in his friend’s faces (A habit he keeps all the way into the marines)

Still I feel a little bit of sympathy for the boy. While it may seem weird to feel bad for a boy who would grow up to join the ranks of those who have assassinated American presidents, I feel it's justified. He really had a rough childhood growing up. His father died when he was young and he kept moving around with his mom, which doesn’t make for a great environment to make friends, and it doesn’t really sound like he has many, considering that he would rather hang out with animals at the zoo than people. What really killed me though was that he never ends up earning the respect of anyone. In the documentary we watched on Lee, the KGB discussed why they didn’t accept him into the Soviet Union and it is just brutal. They describe him as having no skills, value, or intelligence (both in the military sense and the intrinsic one). They even go so far as to imply that it would be disrespectful to the C.I.A to suspect them of using this man as an agent. Although this is quite ironic, considering that it sounds like Winn Everett is going to use him in his plot.

Libra even supports the idea that he has minimal value to the KGB, as what little intel he has on the U-2 plane and American radio dishes is lost when he gets court-martialed, twice. Dr. Braunfels even tries to convince him to stay, as he will be of greater value if he gains some intelligence. Which is really quite devastating to him, considering his admiration for Russia. So even though it is probably ridiculously un-American to say, I kind of want him to have some success in his defection to the Soviet Union. This is really a remarkable thing that Delillo has done, he has managed to make me sympathetic for an almost insufferable human being, whether Lee deserves this though, is an entirely different question. So what do you think, does Lee Harvey Oswald deserve our sympathy? Or is he just an awful person?

Submitting to the South

Dana’s perspective on the south has changed rapidly throughout the novel, from one of complete disgust to a remarkable acceptance of it. This change can be seen from when she goes back in time to the south for a second time, to save Rufus from burning down the house. Here, she is rendered completely distraught by Rufus’s racist language and refuses to act as a slave, even for her own safety. However this refusal will not last and the next time she goes back she finds herself working as a slave. Still she does display resistance to this, primarily through her reading. As she reads to Rufus and Nigel, even though slave literacy is illegal at the time. She continues to do this even when Mr. Weylin orders her to stop, indicating her refusal to let the south break her.

Sadly, the south does manage to break this part of her resolve even if it was the result of a beating rather than her acceptance. The next time she comes back she slides right back into the role of slave, this time without the support of Kevin. She even goes beyond just accepting her role, to effectively promoting, when she convinces Alice to accept Rufus. Even though she was doing this for more personal reasons rather than Rufus’s order, it still shows how she has had given up on fighting the south. Intriguingly, in The Storm we see that she starts to fight back and argue with Rufus over how he treats Alice. This makes me question what will happen in the end, will Dana still be fighting or will she submit to the South?

[Edit]

Woops forgot to post this Monday. And I guess she doesn’t submit, considering that she kills Rufus.