Lee or Lee Harvey Oswald

Today in class during my panel presentation something struck me. Instead of referring to Oswald as Lee Harvey Oswald, person after person called him by his first name only (this isn't something new but I think it's still revealing). I wasn't sure why it hit me just then, but I realized how odd it was that all the students in our class seem to sympathize with Lee. After all, Lee Harvey Oswald did murder one of the most popular presidents in American history. I guess we seem to overlook that???? It's crazy stuff.

Kennedy did have many death threats and many people were against some of his policies, but he was still very popular. I found this very interesting, especially when considering other famous "president killers" that have been treated much differently. One famous one that comes to my mind is John Wilkes Booth who killed Lincoln. From what I have learned about the Lincoln assassination, Booth was a very unpopular man after killing Lincoln and I find it hard to imagine a sympathetic depiction of him or anyone referring to him as John. The whole idea of using a first name to talk about or describe someone just humanizes them so much more and makes us see them like a real person when people like Oswald and Booth have done these terrible things that in a way it feels odd to humanize them further. I hypothesize that one of the reasons we sympathize with Lee and feel comfortable using his first name when we talk about him, has to do with the fact that we just finished a 400 page book that tracked his life from a little boy onwards. I don't think I would have called him "Lee" before we started reading this book because I had learned about him before and just remembered him as a murder. I wonder how other books portray Lee Harvey Oswald and if the readers of those other books feel a similar sympathy like we do in Libra. Im sure there are books out there that portray Lee sympathetically because they don't believe in the single gunman narrative and think there was more to it. This book is truly interesting because Lee is killing the president, yet it is still a sympathetic portrayal of him.

In class we talked about how people who have done something important or notable often go down in history with their full names. In a strange way, Lee has achieved this level of prestige and status at the end of the book. Obviously he hasn't done the "right" thing but he seems to be satisfied and at peace with his legacy when it is all said and done. At first, when he hears his full name on the news he doesn't really recognize it but he comes to accept it. I find it very interesting how, we as students of history,  remember people who have done morally "bad" things and truly heroic people similarly. We hold on to their full name and that name preserves through time.

Libra an eye opener

Libra has been an eye opening book for me in many aspects. For one, I hadn't realized the magnitude and importance of the Kennedy assassination to people alive in the US before we started talking about the book in class. Obviously it's a huge deal because we lost a president but I didn't think it could compare to something like the 9/11 attacks.  In class we talked about how people who lived through the time can recall where they were and what they were doing when it took place (even if it was a pretty normal day). Anyhow, until now, I hadn't considered the Kennedy assassination to be as big of a deal as 9/11 probably because I wasn't alive when it took place.

Secondly, I never learned about the attack in very much detail. On the first day of class, Mr. Mitchell gave us a few choices and took a poll to see what form we thought the assassination took. As much as I wanted to answer the question, I wasn't able to because I didn't know enough about what happened to have much of an opinion. One option was that Lee Harvey Oswalt was a crazy, disturbed man and killed the president by himself. The second option was that there was a larger conspiracy theory. Before starting to read this book, I knew that Kennedy was assassinated by someone named Lee Harvey Oswald but I didn't realize that there might have been much more to it.

Lastly, as a young child I've always had a positive view towards the CIA and FBI. I've always seen them as being a morally good group fighting off "bad guys" within the country and overseas as well. I never imagined them to be an organization with their own selfish purposes and goals, trying to change the country's course of action. This year in US history class with Mr. Sutton, we learned about several terrible things the CIA has done in the past. In 1953, the CIA tried to destabilize Iran by hiring street thugs to fight in the street and cause a ruckus which led the Iranian leader to flee the country. He was replaced by the Shah of Iran. In Guatamala, in an effort to expel the nationalist leader, Arbenz the CIA got 400 Guatemalans to train and start a revolution against Arbenz. They Set up a fake radio station broadcasting fake revolution news. Arbenz understandably freaked out. The CIA even put  speakers on top of the embassy while “lightly bombing” the capital to make the revolt seem real.

Point is, the CIA is known for doing terrible things and this book portrays the CIA (or at least some semiretired members of the CIA) as selfish and focused on coming  up with a plan they hope can galvanize the country into taking some kind of major action against Cuba. 

A Breath of Fresh Air

So far, I have loved Kindred. It has been the easiest and quickest read of all the books I have read in this class this semester. Slaughterhouse-Five is still my favorite so far this semester, but Kindred ranks up there as a close second. The writing style isn't nearly as unique and complex as Mumbo Jumbo which makes it easier to comprehend and more enjoyable for me personally. The characters are developed in a very logical and straightforward way which makes them easy to follow and get to know. Kindred is a very plot driven novel and the plot is very different from any book I have ever read. So far this semester, we have been introduced to various books that play with our understanding of time and place. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut jumps from one time or event in his life back to another with flashbacks and flash-forwards. He may be taking a nap on a train someplace in Europe during World War II and then suddenly he's back in the States as a young child. In Kindred our notion of time and place is further complicated with the "time travel" that Dana and Kevin experience as they go back more than a hundred years to a pre civil war Maryland plantation. 

The time travel dynamic is very interesting and I personally feel like it really goes along well with the   class title; History as Fiction. Someone in class raised the point that this book is less historical fiction than any of the other books we've read so far this semester. I forget this persons entire argument for saying that but I remember it had something to do with how much this book felt like any other novel they might have read in a normal english class. Anyhow, I happen to disagree. The Antebellum South and slavery as a whole is a very important topic in most U.S History classes. It's obvious that Butler had to do a lot of research to make sure she depicted the slave/owner dynamics accurately. In a way, reading this book would be a great history lesson because of how much it shows the intersection of power, gender, and race issues of the time period. The fiction part has to do with the "time travel" and the obvious reality that the characters aren't real and that there is no way Dana could possibly be trapped in this time. 

Thoughts on Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse isn't exactly your traditional war novel. From my personal experience with war stories, they are very linear and connected. Events take place in chronological order and usually the "war story" is the main part of the novel. For one, Slaughterhouse Five has a separate subplot about Billy Pilgrim’s kidnapping by the Tralfamadorians. There is a tremendous amount of jumping around as the novels skipping timeline advances the story of Billy's experience during World War II with flashbacks of important events throughout Billy's life. In my personal opinion, all of these quirks make the experience feel more genuine and real for a reader. When I read Slaughterhouse Five, I felt like I was talking to a war veteran telling me about their war related experiences while also telling me about their life story. If I didn't know the veteran, it would only be natural for the person to tell me both together. 

In Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut is recalling experiences from a very difficult and disturbing part of his life. Most war veterans who have experienced similar atrocities don't want to recall the events they experienced. Often times people try and forget terrible things so they can move on with their lives. These types of events are difficult and a "touchy subject" for many to recall and usually people tend to come out with bits and pieces slowly rather than entire narratives. The odd chronological structure of the book is explainable and makes it seem genuine. The way it skips back and forth makes it seem like you're talking to someone who was involved in the war as they are trying to recall various events that took place at various times and then frame a story. The various subplots would be a part of the conversation with this person. When people tell stories, they often digress and tell other stories that relate and then pick back up where they left off. It seems unnatural to tell an entire historical account of what happened like most traditional war stories tend to do.

For someone like Vonnegut who was captured by the Germans and placed in a work camp, experiencing the Dresden bombing is an undeniably difficult time. Witnessing thousands of deaths and immense destruction as a prisoner of war would be difficult because of how much time you would have to contemplate life and try to make sense of the terrible things happening around you. I find it reasonable that Vonnegut(Billy) had so many flashbacks and flash-forwards. These flashbacks and subplots would be an important part of the narrative that someone might tell years after the experience. How someone remembers an event isn't always defined by what happened but what they were thinking at the time. These various flashbacks might relate to things Vonnegut was thinking trying to be in a better place while the war was happening.

Panel Presentation Reflection

There were a few key points that I wanted to discuss that our group didn't talk about in our panel presentation on Friday. For one, our article "Set and Osiris in Ishmael Reed’s neo-hooDoo aesthetic" talks quite a bit about how Reed transforms the contents of what “black” writing is in his various books like Mumbo Jumbo. The article argues that Reeds books adapt American history while giving voice to suppressed ideas and peoples and showing that black "writing" can consist of various styles and genres. Reed's unique style in Mumbo Jumbo, with a collage of images and text and a  bibliography challenge the genres that Reed wrote in during the time. In Mumbo Jumbo, Reed's use of African sources (common in many of Reeds books) was his own attempt to challenge the notion of modernist writing which was popular since the 1950s. Reed says "it was his modern interpretation of African American Folklore." 

During my group's panel presentation on Friday in class, someone made a particularly interesting comment that got me thinking. In class, we talked about how in Mumbo Jumbo and various other books that Reed has written, Osiris is seen as the "God of Life". He has a very "happy go lucky" personality as a ruler compared to Set's authoritative dominance. 

Someone in class mentioned (I'm forgetting who but thanks) that it seems odd that Osiris is the founder of agriculture, considering how much manual labor and hard work agriculture entails. Now, ignoring the fact that Set wants to obliterate all life and is against nature, he wants to enslave the people and is enraged at people for enjoying themselves when there was "hard work to be done"(Mumbo Jumbo 163). It seems like Set would be more in tune with the concept of manual labor. Slavery is something that Set is definitely a fan of and throughout history, slavery has been predominantly manifested through agriculture. In my personal opinion, Osiris' personality doesn't fit well with the concept of agriculture. Osiris is able to produce agriculture and grow food by dancing and singing which makes farming seem like easy work when it's not all sunshine and rainbows. 

Booker T Washington in Ragtime

This year I have had the pleasure of taking Mr. Sutton’s junior year US history class as well as Mr. Leff’s class (Race Class Gender in 20th Century American Pop Culture). Through both these classes, I have learned a lot about Booker T Washington. Mr Washington was born a slave in Virginia but attended college at Wayland Seminary. Between the years 1890 and 1915, he was the dominant leader in the African American community. He founded the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama and delivered a speech known as the Atlanta Compromise that gained him national fame. Washington believed that blacks must first become respectable,  economically indispensable, and religiously upright in order to prove themselves to whites. He encouraged blacks to understand their place in society as inferior to whites and to work toward equality over time by “keeping their noses clean”. I found Doctorow’s portrayal of Mr. Washington to be predictable in Ragtime. Based on what I have learned this year, I was able to guess what Mr. Washinton would tell Coalhouse Walker in the library.

In Mr. Leff’s Race Class Gender class, we talked a lot about a boxer named Jack Johnson who became the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion between 1908 and 1915 (Roughly the same time Booker T. Washington was popular). Outside of the ring, Jack Johnson’s personality and his lavish lifestyle were problematic to Booker T. Washington. Jack Johnson ignored racism when he was at the peak of his career. He was seen with white women during various points in his career. He broke the law a lot, drove fast cars around town, and ignored authority. Booker T Washington publicly denounced Johnson’s behavior:

"It is unfortunate that a man with money should use it in a way to injure his own people, in the eyes of those who are seeking to uplift his race and improve its conditions, I wish to say emphatically that Jack Johnson’s actions did not meet my personal approval and I am sure they do not meet with the approval of the colored race.”

Booker T Washington denounces Coalhouse Walker in a similar way in Ragtime. Washington thinks Walker is reflecting poorly on the African American community and tries to convince Walker to turn himself in. As soon as I saw Booker T Washington’s name in the book, I immediately thought of Jack Johnson and was able to guess that Washington would denounce Coalhouse Walker in a similar way. All in all, I thought Coalhouse Walker’s personality was very similar to Jack Johnson’s. Both men had a kind of “smooth swagger” in the way they dealt with racism. Doctorow depicts Coalhouse Walker as reserved yet motivated to get back at everyone for his mistreatment. Jack Johnson defies authority by being showy and taking care of business in the ring. 

 

The not so mysterious Harry Houdini

When I think of Harry Houdini, I think of brilliant magic tricks and supernatural forces. One second we see him locked in a casquette, the next second he's in the audience. It's very easy to see a magician of Houdini's reputation as someone larger than life. After all, his tricks and stunts make him seem inhuman. In today's day and age, most people don't know what Harry Houdini was like as a person. We simply remember him for his wacky tricks that left audiences befuddled. E. L. Doctorow provides a look into Houdini's life and personality in the Book Ragtime. In my personal opinion, Doctorow's portrayal of Houdini makes him seem more like a normal person with emotions and feelings. Doctorow is still able to recognize all the wacky stunts Houdini is able to perform, while still allowing readers to take a deeper look into his personality. Whether or not Doctorow's portrayal of Houdini is accurate, it's still interesting to see what Houdini might have been like.

Chapter 27 provides the most in depth view of Harry Houdini. On page 197, Doctorow shows Houdini only a few months after his mothers death. Houdini goes to her grave in Queens every morning. He "looked up with the swollen and laughable face of grief". Doctorow describes Houdini's suffering by saying "his mother had been dead for some months but every morning he awoke with his wound as fresh and painful is if she had died the night before". During this low point in Houdini's life, Houdini is described to look anything but the "magician of international fame." He hasn't shaved for months and has cancelled several bookings. In the second paragraph on page 198, Doctorow hints that Houdini is Jewish as he leaves small stones at his mothers grave. We get the sense that Houdini may even be suffering from depression when Doctorow says "He knew what it was to be sealed in the earth but he felt now it was the only place for him". All these factors make Houdini seem less mysterious and more realistic. 

Houdini's entire life seems to be shaped by his mother's death. Doctorrow claims Houdini putt her pictures up in his house everywhere, dreamed about her, played the music she listened to every evening, read the letters she wrote regularly. Even his career as a magician seems to change. He decides to see if it is really possible to communicate with the dead.Houdini doesn't seem like an arrogant performer in any stretch of the imagination. His tricks and stunts are impressive but he genuinely seems like a normal guy with feelings, emotions, dreams and ambitions as well. Houdini for example became interested in the idea of life after death and vowed he would discover it. He bought books and began to study mechanical physics.