Lee

Before reading Libra, I knew pretty much nothing about Lee Harvey Oswald. So far, I think DeLillo has done a good job portraying someone known for assassinating a president. Lee is definitely not a likeable character, but as a reader I’m invested in him and want to know how his story continues to play out. Since his childhood he was a social outcast, constantly getting ridiculed for being an outsider at every new location he lives in. When he lives in New York, he gets made fun of for his Southern accent, and when he’s in New Orleans, he gets made fun of for sounding like he’s from the North. Reading things like this instinctively make me feel bad for him, but Lee really isn’t a typical protagonist at all. While he does get bullied for very little reason often, he’s not necessarily a character you feel sympathy for. He’s an incredibly strange person, and to me comes off pretty creepy at times. His only friends are basically the books he reads, and DeLillo makes it clear how much of an impact they have on Lee: “He saw himself as something vast and sweeping. He was the product of a sweeping history, he and his mother, locked into a 16 process, a system of money and property that diminished their human worth every day, as if by scientific law. The books made him part of something.” Characterizing Lee in this manner creates a suspenseful tone for the rest of the novel, yet also provides rationale for many of his actions like joining the Marines. When we get to the place in the novel where the conspiracy of attempting to assassinate the president is underway, Lee’s unawareness of the truth also adds to the suspense built throughout. The fact that DeLillo used factual accounts from Lee’s background makes his fictionalized version of Lee even more interesting to me.

Family in Kindred

Themes regarding family are included throughout Kindred, and Butler portrays a realistic and conflicting dynamic between familial love and the slavery era. During a time when a group of people were considered nothing more than property, the bonds and affection that come from families would be some of the few positive aspects of life in slavery. Butler makes the reality of how easy it was for slave owners to break families apart very clear throughout the novel. Dana and Sam’s brief interaction is a good example of this. The extent of their conversation was basically Sam asking Dana to teach his siblings how to read, yet three days later Sam is taken away from the Weylin Plantation in chains and sold. The only reason for this being that Rufus was upset at Sam simply talking to Dana. Rufus’ ability to just separate a family with no hesitation exemplifies the slavery era idea that black people were nothing more than property.

Another dynamic that Butler explores is how slave owners use family to keep slaves more attached to their plantation. When Nigel marries Carrie, the Weylin’s finally trust him because he’s much less likely to run away and take risky actions with a family to care about. Dana points out that they could easily sell Carrie because she’s so hard working and self driven, but she also cares for Nigel and her mother, making her more useful at the Weylin plantation: “Not only did she work hard and well herself, not only had she produced a healthy new slave, but she had kept first her mother, and now her husband in line with no effort at all on Weylin’s part.” There are many more examples of how owners could manipulate and ruin slave families for personal or business related interests, but I thought these two were pretty straightforward and clear.