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.
