The character of Lee Harvey Oswald presents an interesting set of dichotomies in Don Delillo's Libra. G. Robert Blakey, a law professor featured in the documentary, describes the real life Oswald as, “a mystery wrapped up in an enigma, hidden behind a riddle.”
Lee, as he is called in the novel, is both smart and dumb. He has a learning disability but manages to overcome it and read marxist literature at a young age. As a character, he is likeable and relatable, but also hated by a lot of characters in the book. To me, he seems like the annoying younger-brother-type, who just tries to provoke others just for the sake of doing it. For example, when he rides in the back of the bus, he doesn’t say whether he was doing it out of principle or naivete and he becomes a “misplaced martyr” when he gets beaten up for his actions.
Delillo chooses to refer to the protagonist as Lee, instead of his full name. To me, this makes Oswald seem more like a character in a book than an assassin. No one in the news or media has ever referred to him with something as familiar as Lee. There are times in the book were I feel bad for Lee. The way he is presented makes me forget that he is the man who killed John F. Kennedy.
And of course Lee *is* a younger brother, and his provocations do seem to fit that kind of paradigm at this point (whether it's literally waving the pen-knife at his sister-in-law, or getting himself into trouble, almost deliberately, in the Marines, this is a character with something to prove).
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