Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald. One of the most notorious names in history to date. In all honesty, before reading Libra I knew very little about the conspiracy theories behind Kennedy's assassination. Sure, I knew that they existed, but I knew next to nothing of the content. In fact, I did not know much about the story at all. However, what my naive self did know was the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who shot Kennedy.

Something that I have found particularly interesting in reading this novel is the reoccurring theme of Lee's name being changed, confused, mixed up, or portrayed as unimportant. Leon, Trotsky, O. H. Lee, Ozzie, and others that are escaping me at the moment are all versions of Lee Harvey Oswalds name. Although it may seem inconsequential, I feel like DeLillo is deliberately using these variations of Lee's name. What the vast uninformed public majority do know about this man is his name. So in lining this story with so many different names for Lee Harvey Oswald, DeLillo emphasizes how little we know about Lee as a person.

Throughout the novel, I have gotten the sense that to Lee, it is not so important that people know Lee's name but rather know who he his and know about him. It also seems like he has an inflated sense of self importance in the eyes of his higher powers. He assumes that everyone in the FBI and CIA and such are watching him and know all about him. In fact, when he writes a threatening note to the FBI telling them to stop bothering his wife, he doesn't even sign the note (375). Yet they will know that the note is from Lee, even without his name on the note.

A mere page turn later, the reader learns about the "Oswald doubles." In this case, the name becomes more important because these lookalikes are identified as Oswald only in name. Because a picture of a double is labelled "Oswald" it suddenly has credibility regardless of who the actual person in the photo is. This is ironic because here we see that Lee's name is becoming more important to the plotters as he himself becomes less important.