Taking it all in

It's strange tonight, I'm home from senior supper and it's starting to hit me that it's all ending.  There's the old literary cliche that high school is but a chapter in life.  I'm starting to see the truth behind it.  Even though I know there is going to be another page, there's still an empty feeling, like somehow the rest of the current page is going to be left blank.  It's been fun looking back in the spare moments I've had this week, though if I could lodge one complaint it's that it seems the school has collectively decided to push us out the door at full steam, as opposed to let us gradually glide into the exit.  There's something to be said for the ripping the band aid off approach, but it doesn't leave a lot of time or energy for reflection.  Here's my last ounce of reflection that I think I can spare.

It seems like so long ago that I walked into my first day of African-American Lit.  I really didn't know what to expect, our summer reading had been Native Son.  If you haven't read it, you should, but it's a hard read, Wright wasn't writing to make it an easy read.  I remember bits and pieces of discussions from that class, I remember my first poetry discussion was of a poem called "Liberty." I remember I liked it because it was so short.  Not that I was avoiding reading a long poem, but I admired the effort it took to get the point across in six short lines.  Besides that I think I probably talked at most ten times that entire semester.  I really focused on my blog, but I was never really happy with it.  Looking back on my first post makes me laugh and cringe, the level of insight there is pretty minimal, but it was a start, and starts are never perfect.

I was excited for Coming of Age.  The book list looked great, even higher expectations that the books I'd read (and enjoyed) the semester before.  Then Joyce hit me.  How could I expect a book that began "Once upon a time, and a very good time it was" to be such a challenging book.  It wasn't just that it was written with pre-1900 Irish slang, it was also the effects Joyce was going for.  Catcher was easier, I really like Holden, that was my first and probably favorite pastiche.  Black Swan Green was nearly equal on my favorite scale.  I started to talk a bit more that semester, though then I felt like, well I'm just a junior in a coming of age class, these senior who will be graduating in a few months must have more personal insights because of where they are in their life.  I think this was probably the highlight of my blogs.  It was the perfect timing of feeling more comfortable to share my thoughts, and also the drive to write well thought out and meaningful posts.

Over the summer, going into 20th Century Novels, I made it a goal that I was going to talk more.  I said to myself-you're a senior now, with two semesters of these types of classes under your belt, you gotta step up.  And in a lot of ways I think I did.  Not only did the number of comments I made increase, but I think the quality of them by and large did as well.  I still remember my favorite comment I made in the entire semester, it was second day of reading The Sun Also Rises, and I described my first impression of Brett Ashley that she was intoxicating.  Now I don't know if this was particularly original, but it still stands out, in large part because that was by far my favorite book of the semester, and the description of Brett as having "curves like the hull of a racing yacht" I still can't get out of my mind to be dreadfully honest.  I admit, I think my blogs went down a bit, not so much because I didn't have interesting things to say but more because I didn't have as much time or will power to work on them.

And then this semester? Well I don't really know if I have the perspective yet really for good reflection (though would you say any of this reflection has been good?).  I mean you were in class with me, you probably know how I was.  Talked a lot, even when I didn't really have something to say, kind of lazy on the blogs.  Now, if for some strange reason you did read my first blog post, and got all the way to here on this one, you may notice they have similar rigid structuring.  This was intentional, I figured, may as well end how you started, really tie this whole blog in one nice big digital literary bow of varying insight.  And here and now, forever closes my chapter.

Not as it Appears

As far as we, the students of history, know, Bobby Dupard is a fictional character of Don Delillo.  I was tossing around the idea in my head though, what if Bobby Dupard is fictional in the world of Nicholas Branch. What if he's in Lee's head like a childhood imaginary friend? I believe this idea isn't as far fetched as it initially may seem.  Bobby is first introduced as Lee's cellmate in Atsugi.  This I believe is the 'real' Bobby Dupard.  I can't see anyway that an image of Lee's mind could some how end up as fact on the report that Branch is compiling.  It is after that that I believe it veers away Bobby.  Lee has created a new identity for Bobby.  He is now a figment of Lee's imagination, his actions are a construction of Lee's mind.

Let's take when they reconnect at the laundromat.  Lee is in a tumultuous state, he's not thinking clearly.  I would argue it is him projecting Dupard as the anonymous worker.  He then visits nightly Dupard, only he's really just having a conversation with himself.  The discussion he has with Dupard about Walker then is him guessing what an African-American veteran forced into the ghetto would say about his experiences.  When Dupard is talking about not wanting to miss class to shoot Walker, I think it's part of Lee's mind challenging his planned assassination.  His argument about going in close for the kill or taking the distance shot then is also an internal, not external one.

I admit, the fact that Lee gets a vehicle from Dupard is a bit tricky in my new understanding of Dupard.  The case could be made that Lee has a mental break when he goes to steal the car and by the time he wakes up the next morning is back to himself, the car showing up without explanation equaling Dupard got it.  It's possible but it is sort of a stretch.  Lee does have a propensity for making up stories and people, alternate identities and personalities.  He does expect his cellmate to have wisdom for him like the great revolutionaries, but Dupard doesn't.  He is lonely and consistently abandoned so it would make sense for him to make up someone he expected so much from.  In his mind, history has put Dupard at the laundromat to push him over the edge to take action.  Really, I see it more as the two sides of his mind struggling with what he feels he must do to accomplish his goal of being a part of history.

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades?

I think the underlying fundamental question that Delillo is asserting is, does Kennedy have to die for Cuba? At the midway point of the novel, there are two answers to this question.  Mackey believes that he does, Win Everett thinks he doesn't.  Win originally comes up with the conspiracy, with the stated outcome of a near miss of the President from a sniper's bullet.  It has to be close enough that it looks like Cuban intelligence sent someone to do the job, but not so close as to actually endanger the President.  Already there has been dramatic ironic tensions as Nicholas Branch has written that Raymo and Frank haven't been told to miss, andCarmine Lotta, the man unknowingly funding the conspiracy, has stated he wants to take the head off the snake (AKA JFK).  Essentially, the very thing Everett fears, his conspiracy growing legs of its own independent of him, is happening.  He's lost control from his suburban home in Texas, the plot is now moving without his impetus or knowledge.

But beyond the individual, personal motives for and against actually killing the President, is it objectively necessary?  Looking at this historically, granted with the benefits of hindsight the answer is a firm no.  U.S. policy has never been more directly counter the Castro government in Cuba than during the Kennedy administration.  When Johnson takes over in November '63, his attention turns towards his Great Society, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement.  Cuba effectively disappears from the political debate. Now granted, the Kennedy Assassination was not tied to the Cubans, and if it were I think certainly that would have made a difference, but no other President had as much at stake as Kennedy with regards to Cuba.  Cuba was his biggest embarrassment, and he already had a inferiority complex because of his lack of governmental experience, so he would've done anything to turn it into a win.

If Kennedy had survived that day in Dallas, he would have kept after Cuba.  Publicly the U.S. won the Cuban Missile Crisis, so there would be no reason for him not to keep pressing that advantage.  He was a pretty emotional president, so if he thought Castro had come after him, the threat of the Soviets probably wouldn't have been enough of a deterrent to invade Cuba.  Plus the American public's support for Kennedy would've been galvanized to the point they would have followed him anyway.  I guess then, my conclusion is that it would have been better for the pro-Cuban interventionists for Kennedy to have lived and that Everitt's plot in its original form would have been the best outcome for the whole movement.  In my thinking Mackey seems not only shortsighted but also selfish for letting his personal feelings get in the way of the larger interests he claims to be fighting for.