Free Will in Libra

I think that the question of whether or not Lee has free will is central to this book.  We go in to this book knowing that he killed President Kennedy, what see along the way is why he did it.  In the beginning Lee certainly seems to think he has free will because he is very conscious about his goal of becoming a historical figure.  He takes initiative towards the goal, reading Marx and doing everything he can to become the man he wants to be.  This action on his part suggests that he believes he has to do such things to reach his goals, not just sit back and let destiny take it's course.

However, David Ferrie, Lee's handler/friend, sees life very differently.  In New Orleans, Ferrie takes Lee to see a friend named Clay Shaw.  The first thing this man asks Lee is when he was born, and we find out that Lee was a Libra.  Through Shaw, we get DeLillo's interpretation of what it means to be a Libra.  

He said, "We have the positive Libran who has achieved self-mastery. He is well balanced, levelheaded, a sensible fellow respected by all.  We have the negative Libran who is, let's say, somewhat unsteady and impulsive.  Easily, easily influenced.  Poised to make the dangerous leap.  Either way, balance is the key." (315)

In this book Lee seems to fit much more cleanly into the second of these two types of Libran.  He is certainly unsteady and impulsive, as shown by his attempts to get out of the army, defection to the Soviet Union, and shooting of General Walker. Also, it seems that he is relatively easily influenced by De Mohrenschildt to shoot Walker and eventually by Ferrie to shoot Kennedy.  Finally, the "dangerous leap" he is poised to make is undoubtedly the assassination of the president.  However, it also seems that the "positive Libran" is what Lee wants to be, respected by everyone and in control of his life.  I think that Lee was certainly smart enough to recognize at least some of the parallels between what Shaw said and his own life.  Therefore, when Lee asks Ferrie "Do you believe in astrology?" a few minutes later, this indicates that Lee is seriously considering the notion of astrology and fate.

When David Ferrie attempts to convince Lee to go through with the shooting he uses the argument of fate and coincidence, presenting it as something Lee has got to do, rather than a choice he has to make.

"You see what this means.  How it shows what you've got to do.  We didn't arrange your job in that building or set up the motorcade route.  We don't have that kind of reach or power.  There's something else that's generating this event A pattern outside experience.  Something that jerks you out of the spin of history." (384)

If this argument helped sway Lee towards shooting Kennedy, and I think it definitely affected him to some extent, then Lee must also believe that there is some element of fate in life. What do you think Lee believes about fate/destiny?  Does he believe in free will?

Bonus: Writing about free will naturally made me think of the song Freewill by Rush, which has quite interesting (and relevant) lyrics.

"Libra" as a Title

It is not very clear why Don DeLillo chose to call his book Libra.  Libra is a fairly well known zodiac sign, referring to the constellation with the same name.  The constellation is purportedly a scale or balance, with 2 weighing pans suspended from a horizontal beam.

This is said to symbolize balance, peace, and fairness.  Within the context of DeLillo's novel I think it is interesting to consider why he choose "Libra" as his title as opposed to some other zodiac sign, or anything at all really.  This book really doesn't seem like the kind of story one would title "peace" or "fairness" since it is, above all else, focused on an assassination.  In addition to the violence, DeLillo also extensively discusses how the powerful CIA officials make their own rules, planning a failed assassination on their own president to further their own purposes in Cuba.  Parameter at least is in this plot for direct monetary gains if Castro is overthrown.  This makes it odd to title the book with a symbol of fairness and equality.  

Perhaps the title refers more to Lee Harvey Oswald's beliefs and how he was actually a relatively fair person, as can be seen by his obsession with the marine handbook.  However, he also disregards these rules that he memorizes better than anyone else.  Oswald is also a perfect counterexample to the idea of balance.  His life is defined by the unbalanced nature of his mental state.  On one hand he is a dedicated communist, reading Das Kapital at an early age despite his dyslexia.  On the other hand he is unstable enough to attempt to attempt to shoot Major General Edwin A. Walker, just because of the influence from a man he met for only one day.

I think that either I am missing something huge, or DeLillo has something in store for us later in this book to warrant such a title.  Or, perhaps the point of such a title is to deliberately contrast with the plot to highlight the imbalance, the unfairness, of the events depicted.  Why do you think DeLillo chose such a title?  Is it too early in the novel to make such a judgement?

Kevin's Most Important Trait

I think that Kevin is the most interesting character in Kindred.  He tends to say things that make the difference in race between him and Dana very uncomfortable.  However, he also seems to be the one character in this book who can completely ignore the race of whoever he interacts with, and as a result of that has trouble seeing that race does matter to many people.  After finding out that Kevin is Dana's husband, Sarah says,

“Your husband … he’d get in trouble every now and then ’cause he couldn’t tell the difference ’tween black and white.”

Despite the irrelevance of race in society being, I think, a major goal of racial equality, it seems that this is not  a desirable characteristic in Kevin, a white man married to a black woman.  When he talks to Dana after they see slave children playing a game resembling a slave auction, Kevin minimizes the horror of slavery, sounding similar to how I think someone arguing the paternalism side to slavery would

"This place isn't what I would have imagined. No overseer. No more work than the people can manage ..."

While the things he says are somewhat true, he temporarily overlooks the slew of reasons that slavery, even at this relatively good plantation, is a terrible thing.  Dana instantly reminds him of these reasons.  Although I don't think Kevin actually believes slavery is acceptable in any way, remarks like this are what make his sense of race seem flawed.

It could be said that the friction that arises because of his "colorblindness" is because society is not colorblind as a whole in 1976, and certainly not in the antebellum south.  But, for a society to become colorblind as a whole I think that this disregard of race needs to start with someone and then spread.  If that is true, then perhaps Kevin's awkward remarks should be taken not as something to be looked down upon, but rather as a sign of one of the best parts of his character: the ability to completely ignore race.

135,000

As was brought up during the panel presentations today, there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the dresden bombings and the exact number of people killed.  I did a bit of research and found that there was recently a German historical study of the bombing, partly as a response to the use of this event in far-right radical propaganda.  The results were published in this book, although it is written in German.  From reading the summary given online it seems to be a very thorough and scientific study, which I think presents the most accurate numbers on Dresden.  These numbers are at least 22,700 dead, 20,000 of which can be listed by name.  The upper estimate is no more than 25,000.

Vonnegut's source for his 135,000 figure was The Destruction of Dresden by David Irving.  Vonnegut did not know at the time that this source was far from an accurate history.  It is now widely known that David Irving is a holocaust denier and deliberately misrepresented history in order to downplay Nazi atrocities and exaggerate allied ones.  In writing this "history," Irving used a falsified document created as Nazi propaganda as his main source, and it was from this document that he got his number of 135,000.  It is a shame that Vonnegut was influenced by such a terribly inaccurate historical source.  

In All This Happened, More or Less: What a Novelist Made of the Bombing of Dresden by Ann Rigney, the article we discuss in our panel presentation, the author argues that Irving's book had a greater impact on Vonnegut and Slaughter House Five than just the number it gave. In the opening pages of his book, Vonnegut writes "It wasn’t a famous air raid back then in America. Not many Americans knew how much worse it had been than Hiroshima." This comparison to Hiroshima apparently stems directly from Irving's book, and, through the popularity of Slaughter House Five has been brought into the popular perception of these two bombings.  Vonnegut's unintentional propagation of these misleading figures and arguments are very misfortunate and in the eyes of some take away from the powerful anti-war message of this book.  I think that just because Vonnegut got his numbers wrong and (mistakenly) said that one WWII bombing was worse than another does not reduce the power of this book's message.  His denunciation of war in general is completely unaffected by the details about which bombing in war claimed more lives.

Reed's Version of the Osiris Myth

Reading the lengthly history in chapter 52 made me curious how much Reed stuck to the actual myth of Osiris.  While looking for this myth online, it quickly became apparent to me that it is nearly impossible to define what the "actual" myth was.  However, I did find a source that looks reliable.  This is an English translation from Plutarch's greek recording of the myth.  

The first thing I noticed when reading this translation was that instead of being called "Set" this character was called "Typhoon."  I think this is probably because Set is the god of storms and disorder among other things.  This makes it likely that the Greeks would have called him by their word for storms and disorder, and then when translating to English this would have been translated as "Typhoon." 

I found no mention of dancing throughout the myth on this site.  This is a vast difference from how Reed focuses on Osiris's dancing as his most important characteristic in Mumbo Jumbo.  It is therefore apparent that Reed is not using this story as it is generally accepted in ancient history.  There is also no mention of a text being recorded about these dances that were not in this version of the myth.  However, the Book of Thoth, as Reed calls the text of Jes Grew, is mentioned elsewhere in Egyptian history.  Instead of containing dance moves it is said to have 2 spells, one allowing the user to talk with animals and the other enabling the user to see the gods.  

Another discrepancy between Reed's version and the source I found is how Set/Typhoon kills Osiris.  In Mumbo Jumbo Set brings Osiris back to Egypt by spreading rumors and then challenging Osiris to "Preform the feat of the Germ" (165) and be planted in the Nile to spring forth again.  Osiris eventually agrees to this challenge and is sealed inside a coffer using nails and molten lead.  He does fine, laying under the waters in a "death-like slumber," but when Set and his followers open the coffer, they mutilate him to make it look like he was torn apart by fishes.

According to the source I found, Osiris returns from his travels without any influence from Typhoon, who pretends to be a loyal servant.  However, Set has formed a group of 72 conspirators and laid his plans, in secret obtaining exact measurements of Osiris's body which he uses to construct a perfectly fitting, decorated chest.  He then brings this chest to a feast and says that whoever fits into the chest most exactly will win it.  When Osiris tries it he fits perfectly of course, but Typhoon and his followers immediately close the chest and seal it with nails and molten lead.  They then put this chest into the nile and it is carried out to the sea.  Later, Osiris's dead body is found and Typhoon cuts it into 14 pieces and scatters them across Egypt.

I think that by comparing these two stories it is clear that Reed had read the version found in this source or a similar one.  He uses the same idea of a chest sealed by nails and molten lead which is thrown into the nile.  The question is then why did Reed change the details of this story.  It is clear why he made the changes he did regarding the dancing Osiris and the Book of Thoth, but why did he modify the way Osiris is murdered?

The Center of Art Detention

I think that Ishmael Reed renames the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the "Center of Art Detention" because he is making a statement about how western civilization both exploits non western cultures, but is also afraid of their influence.  The image Reed conjures of a museum being like a prison for the art, much of it from african, asian and south american cultures, but at the same time we know that people pay to see this art from other parts of the world.  In this way, western culture is making a profit  off of other cultures.  However, western civilization is also afraid of other cultures as can be seen in the description Reed gives of the Knights Templar.

[Hugues de Payens] is founding the "Knights Templar," the "poor fellows of Christ."  They are a scraggly bunch who look as if they haven't bathed in months.  The are a kind of Tac Squad for Western Civilization; a mighty highway patrol assigned to  protect the pilgrims en route to the Holy Land from attack by infidels and robbers. (56)

 The very fact that western civilization needs a "Tac Squad" as wide reaching and powerful as the Knights Templar supposedly are in this novel means that there is some serious threat to western civilization that needs to be defended against.  The quote above says that the threat is infidels and robbers, but I think what this really means is non-western civilization.  This is because the cultures that these infidels and robbers come from are non-western cultures, or at least in 1118 A.D. they were non-western.  With that in mind, this quote then reads: The Knights Templar are a kind of Tac Squad to defend Western Civilization against the rest of the cultures of the world.  The "Center of Art Detention" is one of the parts of this defense, containing and controlling the art taken from other cultures by western civilization.  The word "Detention" in Reed's name for this museum tells us that the control this museum has over the art takes a much more containment based form, rather than promoting the art of the non-western cultures represented in this museum.  Using this museum, Reed forms a kind of metaphor for how America treats the rest of the world's cultures in this time period, specifically African culture.  America takes in the valuable parts of the culture, but at the same time stops the culture from spreading and evolving.  Essentially, America ends up controlling the cultures of other people like the Metropolitan Museum controls art.

The Seed of Younger Brother's Revolution

When Younger Brother offers to make bombs for Coalhouse, Doctorow writes, "Thus did Younger Brother commence his career as an outlaw and a revolutionary.  However, I think that this "career" started far earlier in Doctorow's novel.  In fact, I will argue that he started on this path as soon as Evelyn Nesbit left Younger Brother.  This shook him out of the daydream that he had wished for since the start of the novel, but by luck actually got to experience, only to have it turn bitter and come to an end.  He had always been a bit of an outsider, but I think this is what pushed him over the edge into becoming a true outcast from society.  

The next big step he took was when he was mistaken for a police spy standing outside the offices of Emma Goldman's revolutionary magazine.  He is taken inside and ends up at a congress in the Cooper Union in support of the Mexican Revolution.  This time instead of being at such a meeting because Evelyn was there, it seems that he attends because he is drawn to Goldman and her ideas.  He feels ashamed that he, from a relatively wealthy family, has nothing with which to support the cause while the working poor around him all find some change to give.  I think that this is another turning point, the point where he wants to contribute to a revolutionary cause.  We clearly see how strong Younger Brother begins to feel about his ideals when he responds to Father's comment that Coalhouse would have been better off just driving away when he could and forgetting the matter.

Younger Brother bristled.  You speak like a man who has never been tested in his principles, he said. Father was so outraged by this remark that he could find no words.

This firm belief in justice is the basis of all revolution, and Younger Brother obviously has this belief. Of course, the real leap he makes towards becoming an outlaw like Coalhouse is when he seeks out the man himself.  He shows how he truly wants to rebel by the amount of effort he puts into joining him.  An easy way out without feeling like a coward would be to put little efforts in to attempts to communicate such that he never actually got Coalhouse's attention.  However, Younger Brother is no coward when it comes to this revolution, and successfully joins the small group of black fighters.  This officially commences his career, though the seeds had been planted long before.