On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while on tour in downtown Dallas. The president's death and subsequent arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald marked the start of a national news frenzy. The public wanted to know more: more about Kennedy's final moments, more about the young gunman with communist ties, more about what could drive someone to commit such a sensational murder. As a result, American media became a dominant force in society, providing not only information but also a sense of order to an event that confounded the nation. This idea is manifested in the novel Libra by Don DeLillo. Published twenty-five years after the assassination, DeLillo's historical account recounts Lee Oswald's difficult childhood, his defection to the Soviet Union, his eventual return to the United States, and, of course, his involvement in the shooting. Throughout the book, DeLillo examines the role of media in contemporary society and Oswald's own life, emphasizing the media's ability to shape perceptions of reality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get an Original EssayIn the weeks immediately following Kennedy's death, the media transmitted an enormous amount of information in various forms: videos, photographs, facts and speculations. . In Libra, Jack Ruby describes the incessant media coverage of the event by saying: “All day he had been watching television. . . This death was everywhere. Photos of the grieving family. Reconstructions at the scene of the murder. It was an event that had the possibility of being bigger in history than Jesus. (DeLillo 428) The most notable media example was the Zapruder film, released just days after the assassination. The Zapruder Film is an amateur film shot by Abraham Zapruder that provides the clearest footage of the president's death. Although the film clearly shows Kennedy's response to the fatal blow, it is ultimately inconclusive as to where the blow actually originated. Knight explains: "The film showed Kennedy violently jerking backwards and to the left in reaction to the fatal shooting, and most viewers thought this clearly indicated a gunman on the Grassy Knoll (at the right front of the limousine ). . . Others claimed that a jet of brain tissue from the front of Kennedy's head caused his body to fly backwards after he was shot from behind. Most viewers found this counterintuitive, if not downright implausible. (Knight 385) DeLillo reinforces the ambiguous nature of the film by writing: “Experts have scrutinized every murky nuance of the Zapruder film. It is the basic timer of assassination and a major emblem of uncertainty and chaos. (DeLillo 441) The film was shown several times on television and published frame by frame in Time Magazine, and with each successive viewing, another theory about the shooting was born. Even today, the Kennedy assassination remains one of the most controversial events in history because the truth behind the event has never been conclusively determined; There are conspiracy theories that involve everyone from the CIA to Fidel Castro to the Italian Mafia to Lyndon B. Johnson to George Bush Sr. Although it would be easy to dismiss conspiracy theories as the a product of mass paranoia, many critiques exist. who claim that these theories serve a higher social function. For example, Knight views conspiracy theories as "a way to make sense of structure and action in an era where versions"official accounts of events and more academic forms of explanation fail to capture the imagination of a disillusioned public." (Knight 21) I believe these theories ultimately represent the public's need to graft some sort of order onto the chaos that surrounded the events of the assassination. Amid the information overload generated by the media, society has turned to conspiracy theories in search of a ruling ideology that could explain the shootings. Media is one of the driving themes of the novel Libra, which addresses the intrinsic relationship between media and history. The novel implies that because the past is just that, one is forced to rely on media to gain an understanding of historical events. But ultimately, media and history do not have a completely neutral relationship. The media can simply tell the story, but, like conspiracy theories, it also has the power to apply a mediating order to historical events that lack clarity. For example, after the assassination, the public turned to the media in search of answers, in search of some sort of closure. DeLillo describes this research by writing: “People were alone with the news. Only the news could restore them. (DeLillo 414) The influence of media is examined explicitly in the novel through Nicholas Branch's subplot. Branch is a CIA agent assigned to write the story of the assassination, but he finds himself so overwhelmed with information and speculation that he can't even begin to write. Here's DeLillo on Branch: “Branch doesn't know how to approach this kind of data. . . Everything belongs, everything adheres, the murmur of obscure witnesses, the photos of illegible documents and strange sad personal debris, the objects collected at death – old shoes, pajama tops, letters from Russia. It's all just one thing, a ruined city full of trivialities where people feel real pain. This is the Joycean Book of America, remember, the novel in which nothing is left out. (DeLillo 182) Thomas elaborates on Branch's frustration, explaining, "The story becomes a painstaking fiction and a disjointed narrative that ultimately, for Branch, reveals nothing." (Thomas 121) Mott also describes Branch's attempt to "account for every detail of existence," arguing that "Libra makes it clear that this penchant for total explanation leads, in fact, to total chaos." We simply cannot take into account every detail, every nuance. (Mott 142) DeLillo writes, “He feels discouraged, almost immobilized. . . But he persists, he works, he takes notes. He knows he can't go out. This affair will haunt him to the end. Of course, they've known that all along. That's why they built him this room, the room of aging, the room of history and dreams. (DeLillo 445) Eventually, even Branch himself recognizes the futility of his efforts, admitting that he simply cannot separate history from fiction. Because Branch cannot discern a true account of history, he attempts to create order through a fictional account of the assassination. In other words, I argue that Branch is the author of the other two plots in the novel, that of Lee Oswald and that of the CIA. “He enters a date on the personal computer provided by the Agency for convenient tracking,” DeLillo wrote. “April 17, 1963. The names appear suddenly, with the backgrounds, the links, the places. The warm and bright sky. The street shaded with beautiful old houses framed by native oak trees. (DeLillo 15-16) Immediately after these lines, DeLillo's narrative shifts to another scene. The new scene takes place on April 17, 1963 and provides the reader with the background andlocations of people linked to the CIA plot, such as Win Everett and Laurence Parmenter. Similarly, Branch's disclosure of TJ Mackey's real name is directly followed by a scene revolving around Mackey. (DeLillo 302) Ultimately, Branch builds on the idea that “the writing of all history brings persuasion and form to events.” (DeLillo 211) Thomas expands on this concept by saying, “It is in the process of creating a narrative that meaning is created. Without a narrative structure, the assassination will remain just one event among others.” (Thomas 121-122) Radford supports this assertion by writing: “The past, far from being a hermetically sealed entity, awaits the intervention of the wise historian to edit, organize and describe what happened. » (Radford 241) Branch imposes a narrative structure on an incident that lacks any other structure or explanation. It is by carefully examining this narrative that we can observe the immense power of the media. Throughout Branch's narrative creation, the author addresses the role of media in the creation of fictional characters. The first example can be seen in the media glorification of JFK. DeLillo writes: “It’s not just Kennedy himself. . . That's what people see in him. This is the shining image we continue to have. He actually shines in most of his photographs. We are supposed to believe that he is the hero of the age. (DeLillo 67-68) This idealized version of reality remains today, as the public ignores evidence of extramarital affairs and health problems and instead chooses to embrace the media-created image that shows Kennedy as the personification of vitality, intelligence and masculinity. This idea is also continually confronted through the portrayal of Oswald in the novel. While contemporary society is familiar with the idea of ​​a cold-blooded assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald, Libra implies that this is simply another media invention. The entire narrative refers to Lee only as Lee, and it was only after the assassination that the media christened him by his full name. DeLillo writes: “He heard his name on the radio and television. Lee Harvey Oswald. It seemed extremely strange. He didn't recognize himself in the full intonation of the name. . . No one called him by that first name. Now it was everywhere. He heard it coming from the walls. Journalists denounced him. Lee Harvey Oswald. (DeLillo 416) With the designation of this nickname, Oswald's true identity is essentially replaced by that of the ruthless persona created by the media. This media creation is directly challenged through the basis of the Lee Oswald plot, which begins during Lee's childhood and ends with his death at the hands of the openly patriotic Jack Ruby. This story offers insight into Lee himself, his wife Marina, and his mother Marguerite. This humanizes Lee and challenges the validity of our assumptions about Lee Harvey Oswald. Throughout the novel, the author deliberately portrays Lee as an awkward but somehow empathetic character with ordinary hopes and fears; he searches for his purpose in life, he argues with his overbearing mother, he falls in love and starts a family. In fact, DeLillo's descriptions of Lee could apply to most Americans, as he writes: "He was a domestic soul, happy at home, a householder who washed dishes and chatted with his wallpaper woman. . . He was sitting under a lamp, reading political and economic articles, his wife always nearby, in a loose dress, pregnant, with street lamps shining on the river. (DeLillo 208) Postmodern critic Lentricchia argues that these depictions of domestic happinessultimately refuse to allow readers to distance themselves from Oswald and instead offer "a far more disturbing vision of normalcy." (Lentricchia 442-443) Cain completes this argument by positing that "DeLillo takes a great risk, reiterating and fleshing out the domestic contentment—the love of wife, child, and home—felt by the calculating assassin of the revered JFK while ironically portrays the American dreams of a quiet family life. (Cain 278) Although Lee's domesticity in no way excuses his actions on November 22, it highlights the dichotomy between the authentic Lee and the media construction of Lee Harvey Oswald. Libra also addresses the influence of media on how certain characters construct their own personal identities. We see such an effect in Beryl Parmenter, the wife of one of the CIA agents who orchestrated the assassination plot. She highlights the immense power of the media by constantly clipping newspaper articles to send to her friends. DeLillo writes: “She said the clippings she sent to her friends were a perfectly reasonable way to correspond. There were a thousand things to film and they all said something about how she felt. . . She thought they were personal forms of expression. She believed that no message she could send to a friend was more intimate and more revealing than an article in the newspaper about a violent act, a mad man, a black house being bombed, a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire. by fire. Because these are the things that tell us how we live. (DeLillo 261) Radford comments on these actions: “Beryl is not immune to the pernicious reach of the media, as evidenced by her obsession with newspaper clippings. . . That she communicates through these isolated vignettes highlights the debilitating detachment that results in a culture stifled by mass-produced superficial reporting. (DeLillo 233-234) As Radford suggests, the overwhelming power of the media can be seen through Beryl as she uses these media to both express her unspoken emotions and dictate a sense of morality. The influence of the media can also be seen in the character of Marina Oswald, Lee's wife. As soon as she arrived in the United States, Marina was fascinated by American culture, particularly television. DeLillo writes: "One evening they were passing a department store, just strolling, and Marina looked at a television in the window and saw the most remarkable thing, something so strange that she had to stop and look, holding on tight to Lee. It was the world turned upside down. There they stared at each other open-mouthed on the television screen. She was on television. Lee was on TV, standing next to her, holding Junie. . . She kept going out of the picture and back in. She was amazed every time she saw herself return. (DeLillo 227) Although one might assume that this description is merely a comic presentation of a recent immigrant's bewilderment, Thomas argues that "Marina's ignorance of television serves primarily to draw attention to the medium itself. (Thomas 115) Essentially, Marina does not have the ability to separate her true self from the one shown on television. As her perception of herself becomes confused with what she sees on television, she also loses the ability to separate reality from the fantasy shown in and by the media. Media and its role in society manifest as ideas most explicitly in the character of Lee, whose world is a "fragile media-inspired fantasy." (Radford 227) Lee relies heavily on films to establish a sense of self and, according to Lentricchia, this is a common practice: as the film becomesculturally dominant, it also becomes a vehicle through which the viewer can see or view it. se. Lentricchia explains: “Film self-consciousness therefore constitutes the contemporary form of self-creation. . . To enter Oswald's mind is to enter a particularly intense – literary – version of such self-awareness, a mind entirely preoccupied with the possibilities of his theatrical future. (Lentricchia 446) Ultimately, Lee's sense of identity is so unstable that he loses the fundamental ability to separate himself from the film's characters. While stationed in the army, Oswald is fascinated by a visit from John Wayne. While other Marines clamor for photos with the celebrity, Oswald instead identifies with the fictional character played by Wayne. As Wilcox explains, "Oswald longs for a role, and what better than the iconographic embodiment of the autonomous individual, the 'lone gunman,' a quintessentially American archetype relentlessly recycled in Hollywood cinema?" (Wilcox 342) The embodiment of masculinity and independence, Wayne's on-screen counterpart represents everything Lee desires to be. In fact, Lee's identification with the Wayne character is so strong that he momentarily loses the ability to distinguish between himself and that character. DeLillo describes how Oswald inserts himself into Wayne's film, saying, "He looks at John Wayne for a moment longer, thinking about the cattle drive. . . The rearing horses, the googling trail hands, the lively music and singing, the honest stubbled faces (of men he felt he knew), all the glory and dust of the great road north. (DeLillo 94) A month before the assassination,Oswald once again became fascinated with cinema while watching a double feature on television. The first film is Suddenly, starring Frank Sinatra as a young soldier who goes to a small town to assassinate the president. The second is We Were Strangers, starring John Garfield as a rebel who plots to kill the Cuban dictator. DeLillo describes Lee's obvious connection to the films, writing, "He felt connected to the events on screen. . . A gritty old film that carried his dreams. Perfection of rage, perfection of control, of fantasy. . . Lee felt like he was in the middle of his own movie. (DeLillo 369) As in the John Wayne film, Lee inserts himself into these films; his bond with them is so powerful and his own self-esteem so low that the lines between media and reality become blurred. In addition to films, Lee is also greatly influenced by other media, such as books and newspapers. For example, after reading works such as Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, Lee discovered what he had previously lacked: meaning in his life. DeLillo writes: “Books were private, like something you find and hide, a lucky coin that holds the secret of who you are. The books themselves were secret. Forbidden and difficult to read. They modified the piece, gave it meaning. The bleakness of his environment, his own shabby clothes were explained and transformed by these books. He saw himself as part of something vast and radical. The books made him part of something. (DeLillo 41) For Lee, these books not only give him insight into Marxist ideals, but also help define his identity. They give meaning to his quest to fit into the flow of the story. This quest is further reinforced by Lee's imagined resemblance to Kennedy himself. DeLillo comments: “Coincidence. . . Did his military service in the Pacific, like Kennedy. Bad handwriting, bad spelling, like Kennedy. Pregnant women at the same time. Brothers named Robert. (336).