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.
As we'll see further in _Libra_, it's not even clear that Oswald *did* "hate" Kennedy. In terms of his personal politics, Kennedy isn't as obvious a target as, say, General Walker (not to justify the assassination attempt on Walker, of course, but he is a more logical target, given Lee's ideological leanings). As the Frontline doc. frames it, Oswald was an enigma, and he remains an enigma: like the event itself, it seems like the more facts we know about his life, the less we understand about the particular course it took.
ReplyDeleteAnd this ambiguity makes him an ideal protagonist for a novel. DeLillo can treat him like a protagonist in a coming-of-age novel of sorts, whose life doesn't follow a single straight line toward the inevitable assassination.