Oswald's Childhood and its Future Effects
Oswald's childhood was a troubled one. Growing up with his single mother, and changing schools from time to time was hard, let alone the fact that he was a loner. For this, he was made fun of, and led him to pursue different schools of thought in order to set himself apart. This post will be exploring this childhood of Lee's, and how it influenced his thoughts and behaviors later in life.
We are first introduced to Lee in the first chapter, In the Bronx. He lives alone with his mother in their apartment in the Bronx. Their lifestyle is not a lavish one, shown by their lack of heating and broken down television, but Marguerite (Lee's Mother) still does her best to spoil him. At school, he is made fun of constantly and has difficulty keeping up with the material, so instead he skips it, rather preferring to ride the subway and observe the people there. While he is not stupid, he lacks a fatherlike figure in his life ever since his father and brother left. This lack of father figure might explain his willingness to be manipulated by other, older men later on in life. His mother constantly makes excuses for him, permitting his continual skipping of school, and never punishes him for his bad actions. Later on, it will be clear why these actions are so important, and lead to the development of the person he grows up to be.
The next time we are introduced to Lee as a child is during the chapter In New Orleans. Immediately we learn that Lee has gotten into a fight, bleeding at the lip, for riding "in the back of a bus with the Negroes. Whether out of
ignorance or principle, Lee refused to say. This was also like him, to be a
misplaced martyr and let you think he was just a fool, or exactly the
reverse, as long as he knew the truth and you didn’t" (49). This is a perfect exemplification of Lee as a character, preferring to remain an enigma rather than to act intelligent. He is also hated for his northern accent, which is ironic, because while in New York, he was hated for his southern accent. It shows the extent of his identity crisis, not fully belonging to one place, which could later explain his fascination for the Soviet Union. It was also in New Orleans that he engrossed himself in communist literature, spending his days at the library, and dreams of traveling to far off locations by joining the marines. Finally, this chapter also does a good job of highlighting the relationship between Lee and his mother, in which she will let him get away with talking back to her with a lack of punishment. Rather than looking at her positives, how hard she works to support them etc., he focuses on her flaws, critiquing them at any given opportunity.
Lee's childhood was by no means an easy one, but DeLilo does a masterful job of weaving together both fictional and real facts to better portray how it would lead him down his unique life. By mixing together threads of alienation, instability, ideological influences, Libra serves as a greater message of the power childhood has to form someone's lifetime.
As I think I mentioned in class at some point, DeLillo's portrait of the future assassin as a young man is heavily indebted to his mother's own interminable monologues to the Warren Commission (to Earl Warren himself, mostly) where she shares every little detail that a mother would remember about her dear boy. And we might say that Marguerite is not the ideal source for info on Lee, given her strong and obvious biases. I love the way that DeLillo both uses her as a source AND depicts clearly how easily she gets on Lee's nerves--to the point where, at the time of the assassination, they have been out of touch (despite living in the same city) for a full year (during which time her second grandchild has been born). Marguerite has had a tough life, too, and she clearly saw the value in her first-hand views of Lee: we might think of her massive contributions to the Warren report as the "book" she threatens to write upon Lee's return. Ironically, it's entirely possible to read "through" her account to see a troubled and insecure young man who enjoys having a "secret life"--we see Lee through the ways that his mother annoys him to no end. DeLillo's account isn't identical to Marguerite's; instead, it's as if he uses her glowing reports about her talented and intelligent son as evidence of how much Lee must have defined himself in opposition to her.
ReplyDeleteI think your analysis of the influence Lee's childhood had on his later character growth is really interesting. Maybe Lee's narcissistic tendencies originated from his mother's excuses for his actions, allowing him to do and experience things others can't without being reprimanded. Then, perhaps because of Lee's identity crises, he wished to become an individual acknowledged by the world around him and gain historical importance.
ReplyDeleteJoseph this blog post is so good! I completely agree with you on how Lee's childhood heavily influences his growth and development as a person. I think that because Lee grew up with a part of his identity missing he begins to search for that throughout the story looking for different ways to repair/replace that piece. Keep up the amazing blogs Joseph!
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