History and Fiction

At the beginning of this course, Mr. Mitchell told us to write in our notebooks comparing history and fiction. I said,

History is true while fiction is not. Fiction has more freedom of imagination while history is contained to events that have actually taken place. Fiction could foreshadow or reflect on history, and both are comprised of amazing stories. History can have the effect on you that a well written fictional book can, but fiction can't replicate the fact that history actually did happen and it is real. 

Additionally, I wrote that when I think of history, I think of the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, as well as other things I have learned  in history class. However, when I think of fiction, my mind goes straight to different novels that I've read, whereas with history, books rarely cross my mind. 

I also wrote a post explaining how my views of history and fiction had changed after reading Ragtime. I said that fiction and history were more intertwined that I thought before, and that you can fill in holes in history using fiction. I also said that fiction is the future history, and that fiction is just history that hasn't happened yet, even science fiction. 

After taking the entirety of the course, my view on history and fiction have changed again.
I do still think it is very cool how fiction can be used to fill in the holes in history, and that fiction can be incorporated into history to create for a totally possible just not historically confirmed narrative. History and fiction are deeply intertwined within each other and the two can be so deeply interlaced that it is hard to even tell the difference between who is fictional and who is a part of history, like in Libra. History can also create an interesting setting for a completely fictional plot like the time travel in Kindred. Additionally, the combination of history and absolutely crazy fiction can form an intricate storyline that involves social norms, civil rights, and the rightful location of art in Mumbo Jumbo.

I think that every fictional piece of writing was written with history in mind to an extent. Either with novels like the ones in class, where history is directly referred to and followed, or in the opposite instance where you try to stay away from history and make new ideas and events.

No matter what, history and fiction will be together. Even when learning about history, some facts may ultimately be wrong, and will be fiction, and all fiction is based on history, and if not based on history, it is writing new history that has yet to happen.

DeLillo's use of two narratives and fictional examples to explain

So far, while reading Libra, I have read the "In 'Setting'" chapters better than "date" chapters. This is most likely because in the setting chapters I have a better idea of what will happen next, since I know the general course of Oswald's life after watching the Frontline documentary. However, I do equally enjoy the date chapters, because they introduce an unpredictable and conspiratorial storyline to Oswald's life.

As the two kinds of chapters merge, it is interesting to see how Oswald's largely nonfictional narrative combines with the largely fictional narrative. I am amazed at how smoothly DeLillo transitions Oswald into a fictional life with a nonfictional outcome (that of shooting the president).

I really like that in the setting chapters, DeLillo creates events that fill holes in Oswald's life, using the date chapters to help. I also think it's really cool that DeLillo clears up many areas of interest that are not covered in the Frontline documentary. For example, the documentary shows a mug shot of David Ferry, looking extremely creepy and kind of like a naked mole rat or something. However, it doesn't really explain the reason he looks so physically abnormal. Additionally, it talks about how there were rumors swirling that Ferry sexually assaulted his cadets. In Libra, DeLillo addresses both of these issues using explanations as well as examples to help us understand that involve most likely fictional events. To confirm Ferry's supposed relationship with his cadets, DeLillo has him rape Oswald, showing us that he most likely raped his cadets. On a slightly more humorous note, DeLillo explains that Ferry tapes hair on the hairless spot where his eyebrows are, but going over the top and making him look flat out scary. It does surprise me, however, that DeLillo explains that Ferry realized he looked extremely abnormal and actually embraced it. From my impression from the documentary, I would think Ferry was a man who wouldn't ever admit his physical shortcomings and instead be power hungry and extremely insecure. However, this is not the case. He walks right up to Oswald completely naked and proceeds to rape him.

In all, the merging of two initially separate narratives creates for an interesting combination of history within fiction and fiction within largely history, in the end merging to form one giant historical event with fictional twists. The nonfictional holes in Oswald's past are filled with interesting and assumed fictional events that combine to create an interesting and captivating story.

Thoughts on Jack Ruby

Jack Ruby is a very peculiar character in Libra, emitting many different qualities that are difficult to analyze, which makes him a difficult person to read. He acts like he genuinely cares for his strippers, beating up men who touch them, yet he also seems to have engaged in sexual (harassment?) acts with some of the strippers, as well as going way too far in beating a man who touches on of his dancer's bottom to a pulp. The first thing I think of when noticing this kind of behavior is Rufus from Kindred. Rufus seems to mean well in his heart, yet always finds himself doing the wrong thing like raping Alice or something. Ruby seems to have fallen in similar situations, even when he lets the homeless into his club. When he lets these people into his club, his club loses "class", and he fails to receive loans, which plunges him further into debt.

I suspect this comparison to Rufus will continue to the end of the novel because, as we know, Ruby does kill Lee Harvey Oswald and spends the rest of his life in jail. Rufus gets killed by Dana even though he isn't being all that violent with her, and is just sort of admitting his feelings for her. He isn't doing anything as aggressive as we've seen him do before, but he isn't being extremely gentle either. Rufus had been extremely violent over the course of the book, which ultimately led to his demise. Ruby goes through a similar phase. He kills the man who killed the president. It is obviously justified to be extremely mad at Oswald, but walking right up to him and shooting him is going a bit far, just like Rufus went a bit far in showing his love of Alice and Dana (by raping them).

In the end, I believe that Ruby is as patriotic as it appears, because he does go as far as too kill the president's assassin. I also believe that Ruby is a softy in an unfortunate situation as a strip club owner. The owner of a strip club sounds like one of the roughest jobs out there, being in charge of controlling rowdy men, as well as who enters your club, and who the dancers are. Because of Ruby's gentle soul, he cannot refuse the poor beggar and welcomes into his club, knowing it isn't good for business. He also realizes the ugly side of stripping, and that his strippers live tough lives and don't make much money. He helps them when they need it and protects them against perverts.

Initial Thoughts on Lee Harvey Oswald

After watching Frontline's Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?, I have a new sense of what went through Oswald's head in not only the days leading up to the assassination, but in the months and years leading up to it that may have led to him wanting to kill the President. Up until watching this documentary, I had always just thought Lee Harvey Oswald was the man, who, with possible mental problems, had shot JFK in Dallas from a sniper as the President was driving by. I knew Oswald was killed shortly after being arrested, but I did not know by whom or that it may have had more to do than just because everyone was mad that he killed the President.

I am amazed at the weirdness of Oswald's life before the assassination. He grew up in an unstable home in New Orleans before joining the Marine Corps and becoming a very good sharpshooter. During most of his life, he had immersed himself in communist, socialist, and marxist literature. Eventually, he became an avid communist, defecting to Russia. He was watched closely by both USA intelligence as well as the KGB. Eventually, he had to go back to the USA, bringing with him a Russian wife. At one point, he attempted to assassinate General Edwin Walker, a man Oswald described as a fascist. Although barely missing his target, it showed Oswald's disregard for law and willingness to be rash and violent if he thought the circumstances called for it. Soon, he started pro-Fidel Castro organizations in New Orleans, angering many local Cubans who had fled their home to get out of the misery Castro had created. However, he also seemed friendly with a Cuban store owner and told him he could help the store owner overtake Castro. At some point, the Cuban found out about his pro-Castro involvement and an altercation ensued. He tried to get permission to go to Russia and Cuba but was denied in both cases. He even had ties to being an enemy of organized crime organizations. He was believed to have shot JFK from the 6th floor of the schoolbook depository in which he worked. While escaping, he killed a police officer. Oswald never admitted to killing JFK. He was killed soon after his arrest by a man who had strong ties to organized crime. This led to some speculation that the mafia hired Oswald to kill JFK and could not have Oswald admit to anything because it could reveal their intentions, so they killed him, but this was never proved.

This movie was a great one to watch to learn the background of Lee Harvey Oswald and why he may have killed JFK. I still do not really understand why he hated JFK specifically so much. Although he was a marxist and probably a communist, he never seemed to express any personal hatred for JFK. Naturally, the circumstances surrounding the assassination of this president comes with a ton conspiracies, especially considering Oswald never admitted to committing the murder and was killed before he could say much. There are even conspiracies as to who killed Oswald.

These conspiracies offer the prime opportunity to write a fictional narrative of the JFK assassination like Libra does. I am excited to see what the author comes up with to incorporate into the assassination considering the vast amount of conspiracies that exist. I wonder if he will use any old conspiracies and support it, or bring up a new one altogether.

Dana's Lost Arm

We know Dana loses her arm at some point in Kindred from the prologue when the injury is explained. It turns out, she does not lose her arm until her return to the present for the final time. Forever removed from the slave era in which she spent years protecting her great-grandfather Rufus, so he would be alive until the conception of Dana's grandmother, Hagar. If Rufus were to die, Dana could never have existed.

Although scientifically, the reason she lost her arm seems to be that it got sort of cut off by the wall in which her arm was split by upon return to 1976. However, I don't think that is a good reason why her arm was lost. There is something symbolic about it and how after spending years in the 1800s living as a slave in the south, part of her had to stay in the past. She couldn't have all those experiences, learn all those new things, meet all these new people, live the slave era, without paying a sort of price. Although Dana saved Rufus and kept him alive until Hagar was born and she could be born, she ended up killing him. Even though Rufus was rude and awful to Dana and other slaves over and over, I think his intentions were not bad, he was just the product of a bad environment. Dana, coming from an environment in which the behavior shown by Rufus was appalled, was understandably taken aback. I still think that the fact that Dana killed Rufus the first time he bothered her after Hagar was born was a little bit selfish. Although he was essentially about to rape her, he wasn't being violent, and the thought even crossed her mind that she could sleep with him and it wouldn't be that bad. But suddenly, seemingly on impulse, she decides that she would never sleep with him and he is being awful, so he kills him. Did he really deserve to die, considering he was not acting irrational in the era in which he lived in and the occupation in which he worked? I don't think he did. I don't think it was fair for Dana to kill Rufus soon after Hagar was born. The fact that she did showed that for all this time he was keeping Rufus alive solely for her own purposes so she could be born and, although it seemed like she did, didn't have any deep connection to Rufus.

When Dana returned to 1976 for the last time, her arm was cut off in the exact place where Rufus was grabbing her when she traveled back to the present. I think this is symbolic to the degree in which Rufus relied on her. She almost became an extension to him, saving him when he needed it, and trying to knock sense into him when he needed it. After he was shot by her, he clung to her so hard because he needed her more than ever at that time when he was near death. He clung to her so hard that he kept part of her in the 1800s with him.

Time Travel

So far this semester, we have read two books involving time travel. The first being Slaughterhouse-Five, and the second being Kindred. Although the general idea of time travel is the same, the specifics and use of time travel in relation to the novel is very different.

In SF, Vonnegut seems to use time travel as an escape mechanism, to avoid talking about the war at times. Also, time travel isn't the main theme or idea of the novel, it just kind of happens. It's very sudden and the actual idea of time traveling isn't really a big deal. Billy Pilgrim is simply taken from one point in his life and plopped down in another part of his life and continues to live it. Billy takes his time travel for granted at this point, after it has happened many times. However, there is speculation that Vonnegut didn't even mean for Billy's time traveling to be real in the context of the novel. He may have used it just to show mental flashbacks as a possible symptom of PTSD or to cope with the war better. Additionally, Billy's time travel is not as traditional as the kind of time travel we often see in movies and such, where a character travels back to a pivotal point in history (like most of The Magic Treehouse series or the Babe & Me, Honus & Me, etc. series), but, in this case, a character travels back to different points in his own life (like Back to the Future), which happens to coincide with a famous point in history, WWII.

However, in Kindred, Dana's time travel is part of the main premise of the novel and is of the more traditional nature as explained above, where a character travels back in time to a pivotal point in history --in this case slavery-- and often tries to alter history for the better. Dana quickly learns what she must do to prepare for her trips to the past, tying a bag of supplies to her waist in case she goes back. Her travels take her back more than 100 years, way before she was born. Because of this, Dana has no interaction with herself in the past that may lead to any SF like experiences. With Billy, he is always traveling back, confined to the walls of his own life. This makes his travels much less exciting and scary, because he knows it is still him, living his life, with people he knows, where he is welcomed. With Dana, she is the same character, but she is thrust into a completely different time period where she is expected to act and behave a certain way, something she is not accustomed to living in the 1970s.

Although we have not yet finished Kindred, it is obvious that, although it involves the same idea of time travel as Slaughterhouse-Five, it is hard to compare the two novels based on this idea, because the situations in which time travel takes place, as well as the kind of time travel that occurs is so different.

Billy Pilgrim: PTSD? Fair or Foul?

I was going to bring this up in our panel presentation today, but we ran out of time. What I was going to ask was, is PTSD to simple of a diagnosis to slap on Billy to explain his actions? Is it unfair to give him the PTSD diagnosis? Since we did not get to it in class, I will answer it with my opinion now.

To put it simply, I do think PTSD is not a sufficient explanation for Billy's actions and thoughts. PTSD is a concrete disorder with concrete symptoms. Although Billy may have PTSD, that is not saying much. That doesn't really matter. All that says is that he has flashbacks from the war and it haunts his present occasionally. What really matters is the actual depth and substance to his flashbacks.

If we diagnose Billy with PTSD, it is assumed that his time travel and Trafalmadorian experiences are not in fact real but just a figment of his imagination as part of his PTSD. Even if they aren't real, if we label Billy with PTSD, it is easy to overlook them as "symptoms" instead of studying what happens in his experiences, which could tell us more about Billy than simply saying "Oh, he just has PTSD".

As Arch put to a vote today during class, are Billy's time traveling and Trafalmadorian experiences real (in context of the plot of the novel) or fictional, maybe a coping mechanism for Billy. I believe that they are real and that Billy really does go through those things. This may partly be because it creates a better story, but I still believe it. I would believe that Vonnegut may have included them in the novel as a coping mechanism for him personally, but I think they were intended to actually have happened to Billy. I guess I can't really explain why I want them to be real. On Trafalmadore, Billy experiences a way of life that adopts the notion that each moment in time is a moment in itself and we have no free will and what happens happens. He thus adopts the phrase "So it goes". I like to think that Billy's experiences with this alien society quite literally help him cope with the pains that come with war. That if he did in fact have PTSD, it is not expressed by his "made-up" experiences on Trafalmadore, but Trafalmadore actually teaches him to cope with his PTSD better. 

Similarly, If Billy does indeed have PTSD, I like to think that the constant stress of time travel and not ever being relieved from war or having a substantial period of time to recover is the cause of his PTSD, not a symptom. 

Billy Pilgrim and Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim's time travel in Slaughterhouse-Five is very confusing and oddly situated inside of the novel. I have many questions regarding Billy's time travel and how it relates to his experiences and trains of thought throughout the novel.

It is clear that Billy knows that Dresden is about to be bombed before it is even speculated, so we know that Billy has the memories from his past when he is experiencing the present. We know that he had not yet experienced the bombing in the days leading up to it because that happens later in the novel, so he couldn't have been going off of that, assuming the book is told in chronological order.

It seems like at some points, Vonnegut uses time travel to avoid talking about the war. When he's about to get to an interesting possibly climatical point in the war, he quickly transfers to his life as an optometrist or his experiences on Trafalmadore. If Vonnegut had focused this novel entirely on the war and included no other details, it would've been an awfully short novel. He seems to want to avoid the war as much as possible, but still wants it to be a war novel. Was this just extreme PTSD? 20 years after? So much so that he couldn't even write a majority of his "war novel" about the war?

Another thing to ponder is Vonnegut's use of Trafalmadore in the novel. The fact that Billy time travels and gets abducted by aliens is a big deal. Could he possibly be doing this to draw us away from the war aspect of the novel?

In the end, I think Vonnegut started this book intending to tell of his experiences in WWII through a character named Billy Pilgrim, but soon Billy needed a backstory and why not include time travel and aliens? Then he'd have to talk about the war less. Billy's relatively unexciting job as an optometrist is interesting because if Vonnegut had been following his previous trend of injecting very exciting odd aspects to Billy's life, you'd think he'd have a more interesting job. His job as an optometrist could also be a metaphor for how hard it was to write this book and how hard it was to see the war the way he did.

Art

In 2011, The Card Players, a painting by Paul Cézanne, sold for a record $269.4 million.
In 1990, The Concert, by Johannes Vermeer, along with 12 other pieces of art, was stolen from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The 13 pieces had a value of over $300,000,000. A reward of $5,000,000 is still being offered for information on the heist.

The Mu'tafikah stole thousands of artifacts and artwork from a countless number of museums around the world. Think how much money that would be worth if sold for ransom or in the black market. Instead, they send it all back to its original home, whether that be Asia, Egypt, or another place around the world. This shows how much it meant to the Mu'tafikah for this art to get back to its original location, risking their lives, and not for any personal gain other than the knowledge that the art is back where it belongs (in their opinion).

Art, as the Mu'tafikah seem to understand it, is more than just a painting or sculpture hanging on a wall or set up in a museum for people to constantly walk by, admire (for what reason?), and to continue on their way to the next "masterpiece". The Mu'tafikah seem to think that art is an experience. Art is more than just what is within the frame to which it is confined. Viewing an Egyptian sarcophagus next to hundreds of other mostly unrelated pieces in a giant hallway surrounded by tons of other people waiting to catch a glimpse is far different than traveling deep into the heart of Egypt, down to the burial chamber of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh and seeing the sarcophagus next to all of the pharaoh's belongings. However, what about the extreme inconvenience that comes with the "full experience"? The Mu'tafikah obviously think that you only deserve to see the art if you go the extra mile to get to the art.

Obviously, society has chosen a different path to art viewing. Across the entire world are art museums devoted to displaying thousands of artifacts, paintings, sculptures, and other various art mediums. Generally, you walk inside, pay admission (unless you have a pass), and are free to wander the various exhibits. At the art institutes I've been to, the art is sorted loosely by era, movement, or location.

The Mu'tafikah are a group who think it is some sort of crime to keep art in museums like this. They call the Metropolitan Museum of Art the Center for Art Detention. Personally, I love the idea of traveling deep into the jungle to see an ancient piece of art, but thats unrealistic in most situations, and I do still want to see the art. Besides, there are still artifacts in the world that are still hidden, some known, some unknown.

History vs. Fiction

After finishing Ragtime, I realized that it was an example of a novel that was fiction, but could've very well taken place in real life. That isn't to say that nothing happened and it was a bore, but that there was nothing extraordinary in the book, yet it managed to keep my attention. Before, when I thought of fiction, I usually thought of magic, fantasy, or sci-fi books. Now, I realized, that something can be fiction without it needing to be impossible. 

That being said, fictional authors often do a great job of making a book entertaining, even if it isn't necessarily filled with action. Although Ragtime does have a lot of action in it, especially when Coalhouse is committing his crimes, it doesn't have an overwhelming amount. Yet we keep reading. Why don't we just skip the seemingly inconsequential parts of the book and get right to the good stuff about the bombs and murders? Doctorow does a great job of keeping us entertained through parts of the book that may not matter in the long run. 

Before reading Ragtime, I viewed fiction and history as two entirely different things. I thought fiction was completely untrue. When I thought fiction I thought about novels that I've read for various english classes and in my own time. When I thought history, books rarely came to mind. I thought of history class and the way everything since the beginning of history had lead to the next as a never ending flow of events.

After reading Ragtime, some new things about the comparison between fiction and history have come to mind. I've realized that history can be intricately intertwined into fictional works. As obviously as in Ragtime with Henry Ford, JP Morgan, Emma Goldman, Evelyn Nesbit, Harry K. Thaw, Stanford White, and Harry Houdini but also not so obviously in other works. The entirety of history is unknown. Nobody knows everything that happens. Even to an author whose writing may appear fictional to everyone except a couple people. What is being written about may have happened at some point to someone. Furthermore, the fictional events that truly have not taken place are just waiting to take place. Fiction is the future history. Even science fiction novels may become reality someday. When that happens, there will be new science fiction novels to take their place. History and fiction is an endless string of events, fiction only being slightly ahead of history in the grand scheme of things. 

Need for a Cause

In Ragtime, the unnamed character Mother's Younger Brother has an inherent need for something to do. Be it chasing Evelyn Nesbit, fighting with Coalhouse Walker, or participating in the Mexican Revolution. Initially, his obsession and subsequent ejaculation on, and sexual relationship with Evelyn Nesbit seems just like a short and intense obsession. However, when we look at his actions in the rest of the book, it may have been more. This obsession may have been to fulfill a need beyond that of his sexual desire. Mother's Younger Brother just had a need to be doing something for some sort of cause, whether it be personal or for a greater cause. 

At first, with Evelyn Nesbit, Younger Brother seems to have nothing else in his life. He seems to be immediately infatuated with her because she gives his life purpose and something to actually pursue. This obsession reminds me of Borat's obsession with Pamela Anderson in the movie Borat. In Borat, the main character, Borat, a native of Kazakhstan goes to the USA to learn their ways to help better improve his home country. When he's just sort of wandering around in the states, looking for something to learn and do, he sees a TV program about model Pamela Anderson in his hotel room. He then drives from NYC to LA to try and find her and marry her. He hilariously fails, but that's not the point. The point is, he's looking for something to do and a cause to follow, so he finds a woman. Contrary to in Borat, Younger Brother Surprisingly succeeds. Another comparison I thought of when reading about Younger Brother and how he hired a prostitute just for the company and not the sex. Jake does this in The Sun Also Rises. This shows the extreme loneliness in Younger Brother's life that not even sex with Evelyn Nesbit, the sex symbol of that era, can fulfill.

To fulfill his extreme loneliness and need for something to fill the void of cause in his life, Younger Brother turns to a more significant cause in helping Coalhouse in his cause. When Younger Brother devotes himself to this cause, I feel like it isn't because he believes in what Coalhouse is fighting for, which at this point, is more than his vandalized car, but because he truly needs something in his life before he starts to self destruct. He's a very degenerate character who could, at any point, do something rash that could hurt himself or others. Ironically, he makes bombs. This incident that Coalhouse was victimized, happened at least in the same town as Younger Brother, and he could've believed in the related civil rights cause. However, Younger Brother's final stand in trying to fill the void in his life whose origins we don't even know, has seemingly nothing to do with Younger Brother in any way. He may have read about the Mexican Revolution in the newspaper, but to actually go all the way from New York to Mexico to participate and ultimately die for this cause seems a bit far. The only thing I can come up with as to how this relates to Younger Brother's story is that he must've been extremely desperate to find something to do after Coalhouse's surrender. He must've been addicted to the feeling of rebellion and living for something, which is what, in the end, killed him. 

Nonfictional characters

I've read many non fiction books before, and I've read many fiction books before, but I've never read a book that incorporates nonfictional historical characters into a fictional story like Ragtime does. Additionally, each "real" character serves a different purpose in the overall landscape of the book. JP Morgan, for example, can be used to show the vast contrast between the lifestyle of the rich and the lifestyle of the poor or even upper middle class. He lives so lavishly that it makes us readers wonder if he really needs every ancient Egyptian artifact.

Another historical character in Ragtime is Harry Houdini. Houdini relies greatly on his motherland cannot function very well when she dies, so he starts spending time looking into the supernatural and communication with the dead. In reality, Houdini was very close to his mother, even presenting her in style at a ball one time. In the book, Houdini is seen as a character with upper class wealth but still finds himself performing and hanging out with lower class people. This creates a wonderful contrast between Morgan, a man who gained his wealth through banking and being in a wealthy family, versus Houdini, whose wealth was attained by performing amazing feats of escape. The difference here is obvious, banking is an upper class way to get wealth while performing escape seems more like saloon entertainment.

Henry Ford is another well known character in history who is placed in this book to create a backdrop for what is happening at the time of Ragtime. Ford comes from a non-wealthy background but makes gobs of money with Ford Motors and the invention of the assembly line. Ford seems somewhere in between Morgan and Houdini, having risen from nothing, but having inserted himself --unlike Houdini-- into the upper class. In the course of history, As well as creating a long lasting car company, Ford helped industrialize the nation, reducing the need for skilled workers and making factory workers less personalized and more like machines.

Some nonfictional characters are introduced into the novel to help or hinder the arguments of the more important fictional characters in the book. Specifically, Emma Goldman and Booker T. Washington. Goldman is introduced earlier in the book as a political activist who initially spurns Tateh's hatred for Evelyn Nesbit, the sex symbol of the Ragtime era. Goldman is reintroduced in the novel near the end to back up Coalhouse Walker's rebellious cause. Booker T. Washington, however, is brought into the novel for quite a different reason. Washington is extremely against Walker's cause. He believes that black people should earn their rights through peace and friendship to get help from white people.

Washington and Goldman, as well as many other nonfictional characters are brought into Ragtime in order to connect and to contrast with the arguments of the more important fictional characters in the book.