From
the beginning of Libra, when Lee is
just a child, to the end, after Lee dies, we see that Lee goes through many
different stages in his life. First, he is just a kid living with his mother,
then he joins the marines, goes to Russia, comes back, and so on. DeLillo makes
these stages clear by giving Lee a different identity in each one – he goes by
Lee, Ozzie the Rabbit, Alek, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc. There are two characteristics
of his identity, however, that stay constant throughout the entire book. First,
he studies and supports Communism, and he is fascinated with visiting communist
countries like Russia and Cuba. Second, he always either tries to distance
himself from others or ends up in a situation where he is alone. The irony here
is that these two things conflict with each other. Communism is all about unity,
communal well-being, and sharing with one’s comrades. Distancing oneself from
others is therefore discouraged, and acting on one’s own is in fact a much more
capitalist notion than a communist one.
These
two conflicting characteristics of Lee are established concretely at the
beginning of the book when Lee is perusing the catalog at the library. The
books that jump out at him are Das
Kapital and The Communist Manifesto
by Marx and Engels. He learns about “the workers, the class struggle, the
exploitation of wage labor” (34). He reads about Trotsky, and learns that he
lived in exile in the Bronx. He seems to almost worship Lenin and Stalin as communist
leaders, saying that “these were men who lived in isolation for long periods,
lived close to death through long winters in exile or prison, feeling history
in the room, waiting for the moment when it would surge through the walls, taking
them with it” (34). Despite his obvious devotion, though, he explains that the
only reason he reads these books is that “the tougher the books, the more
firmly he fixed a distance between himself and others” (34). I find it
extremely surprising that Lee, reading about the unification of the working
class and other such major communist principles doesn’t even consider the fact
that the reason for his interest in Communism is the least communist thing at
all – he supports it solely because he wants to be special, different from his
friends and colleagues. Indeed, when he finally goes to Moscow, he is not
treated with the hero’s welcome he expects. Everyone is communist there, so he
is not special at all, and this disappoints him quite a bit.
Although it does seem that he continues supporting Communism to stand out of the crowd, initially there is evidently some philosophical pull that later brings Lee into the midst of the Soviet Union. You do bring up a good point that his beliefs contradict his actions, perhaps giving a reason why nobody ever wanted Lee to be a part of their plots. His inability to stand out as he wishes no matter what actions he undertakes (Defecting to the Soviet Union and back) is just a part of what makes him so susceptible to professionals in the top-secret business, driving the plot of Lee's narrative forward throughout the novel.
ReplyDeleteI like your point that his two common characteristics throughout the novel oppose each other. Once again the balance associated with the Libra comes in and once again Lee contradicts himself. I would say a third consistent trait actually is that he's consistently contradicting himself.
ReplyDeleteLee's full of contradictions (like everyone, really), but I never noticed the Communism vs isolation problem before. Maybe he wants to be a god/martyr figure in the name of Communism by only supporting pure Marxist theory, rather than considering himself part of a Communist community (aaand I just remembered he looked for a Communist cell for years which probably throws that idea out the window). He always lets himself get beaten up while wearing the same smug expression and probably would have been okay with someone assassinating him just because it would get him notoriety as a unique figure in American history. The only really keeping him alive is the possibility that he'd make a bigger impact while living before he died for good.
ReplyDeleteI think it is a really good point that he is being communist because he wants to feel special. This can also explain why he becomes increasingly radical as the novel goes on. It is significantly more unique for a middle school kid to be reading Marx than a grown-man. And in his attempt to maintain his status as the "special", extra-devoted communist he is forced to more and more radical things.
ReplyDeleteThe desire to both be viewed as special as well as a worker in the class struggle is actually a common characteristic among communist dictators. If you think about it, it's not that surprising, because if the whole point of communism is the idea of egalitarian uniformity, why does one person get to lead the rest? It all stems from one person's complex that even though everyone is "equal", they are somehow justified in being "more equal" than everyone else, and Lee sort of fits that archetype, except that in his idea of communism or even the world, everyone who isn't him is just peripheral.
ReplyDelete