“Nothing is a coincidence” and How We Analyze Historical Events from the Present

 (Warning: this blog post is going to be more introspective and very visibly just me going through my thoughts)

Libra by Don DeLillo mixes fact and fiction to fill in the gaps of the historical November 22, 1963 event of JFK’s assassination. DeLillo creates a fictional lattice work that ties together the given facts of the situation in a seamless way, especially if you’re someone like me who knew practically nothing of the event before. 

The novel centers itself around Lee Harvey Oswald, but David Ferrie’s character stood out to me particularly with what he was spouting to Lee about coincidences. On page 384, we view a conversation between Ferrie and Lee: 

“There’s no such thing as coincidence. We don’t know what to call it, so we say coincidence. It happens because you make it happen…We didn’t arrange your job in that building or set up the motorcade route. We don’t have that kind of reach or power. There’s something that jerks you out of the spin of history.”

Here, Ferrie acknowledges the various coincidences that have played out up to the point of the assassination. It is clear that regardless if this is something that he believes in, he’s using his beliefs and expressing it in a way to manipulate and indoctrinate Lee into the assassination plan. He frames it in a way to make Lee believe that he was meant to do this. That the universe wanted this to happen. That all of these events wouldn’t have occurred if Lee was supposed to do this.

However, we see many characters follow this same train of thinking. Obviously, we see this clearly with Lee, since his mindset was forcibly rewired as he was manipulated. When he first gets involved in the plot, he ponders coincidences and the role they had in his life: 

“Of course it was only coincidence that Ferrie mentioned the thing one day and it appeared in the paper the next. But maybe that was even stranger than total control…Coincidence. Lee was always reading two or three books, like Kennedy. Did military service in the Pacific, like Kennedy. Poor handwriting, terrible speller, like Kennedy. Wives pregnant at the same time. Brothers named Robert.” (DeLillo 336).

These chains of coincidences (along with many others) connected Lee to the assassination plot, but was it truly fate that he ended up being the one to shoot him? The events of the assassination still could’ve occurred with a different gunman, but the fact of the matter is that Lee ultimately made the decision and sealed his place in history. Another example I noted was how Jack Ruby expresses this same thought process. On his way to kill Lee, we see his streamline of thoughts: “He was running late. If I don’t get there in time, it’s decreed I wasn’t meant to do it…If I get in this easy, it means they want me to do it.” (DeLillo 436-37). He believed that he was predestined to do this, and if things didn’t work out in the way he expected, then he wasn’t meant to do it.

Regardless if you agree with these beliefs and think that everything was meant to happen or not, it is undeniable that our frames of thinking are altered similarly when analyzing historical events. The assassination of JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald’s role in it were irrefutable. DeLillo tries to create a plausible portrait of Lee and how he could’ve been brought into this plot. The readers subconsciously grasp the details given and try to make sense of how these events and characteristics led up to the assassination. In the eyes of most, the assassination is the culmination of everything in Lee’s life, so we subconsciously try to understand how these events resulted in his killing. We have taken this event, as something so cemented in history, viewing all of the details leading up to it as inevitable: this event undoubtedly led to this event, this trait of Lee makes sense to why he did this, and so on. We seek explanations for these coincidences because of our desire to understand these uncertainties. We feel the need to make sense of a situation. We see him as the future killer of JFK, rather than Lee Oswald. The Texas Book Depository had little significance before the event, but now we see it as the shooting area where Lee was. We accept historical events as they’re given (reasonably, since they’ve already occurred), but it completely changes the way we think about the details leading up to the events. Those details are just watered down to people and places and objects that are just waiting for these historical events to happen.

He is known as Lee Harvey Oswald, so DeLillo humanizes him by just expressing him by his given name throughout the book. Lee makes a remark when observing Francis Gary Powers: “It occurred to Oswald that everyone called the prisoner by his full name… once you did something notorious, they tagged you with an extra name, a middle name that was ordinarily never used. You were officially marked.” (DeLillo 198). The readers only think of him as Lee Harvey Oswald, which is noted by the end of the book: “his life had a clear subject now, called Lee Harvey Oswald” (DeLillo 435). His life is defined by this notorious event, something that led to history only referring to him by his full name. 

There’s a lot that could be said about past events. Was it something that was truly inevitable? Was it something that could have been preventable? How different would the future be if this hadn’t happened? Despite my belief that everything is not predestined and events can just occur, it’s something I think about. Especially with the fact that I’m so detached from so much of history and historical events happening, it’s not something I really process. With reading Libra, so often I would think of the assassination and think how surreal it sounds, and I’m just living in the future that transpired after this event. It leaves me to wonder how would a reader approach this book if they had never heard of Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination?

"When had I stopped acting?:" Dana's Growing Lack of Distance in Kindred

 “Once—God knows how long ago—I had worried that I was keeping too much distance between myself and this alien time. Now, there was no distance at all. When had I stopped acting? Why had I stopped?" (Butler 220). A question we explored in class and via a notebook prompt: when had Dana stopped acting as she kept returning to the past? At what point does she stop fulfilling a role and lose her distance? In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Butler reexamines the history of slavery in America through the personal lens of Dana, an author from 1976 who continues to be drawn back in time to save the life of her ancestor Rufus.

In the beginning of the novel, Dana is insistent on keeping her distance from the horrors she experiences in the 1800s. She tries to remain as detached from it as possible, insisting that she is merely playing a role and that it’s not something that pertains directly towards her. She explains this to Kevin during their first trip together: 

“And I began to realize why Kevin and I had fitted so easily into this time. We weren’t really in. We were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors. While we waited to go home, we humored the people around us by pretending to be like them. But we were poor actors. We never really got into our roles. We never forgot that we were acting” (Butler 98).

At first, Dana views this surreal situation as something separate from her, almost as if she was watching a play unfold on a set. However, as the novel progresses and her journeys back in time go from a few minutes to months on end, it becomes more difficult for her to maintain the distance between herself and the life of slavery. 

Due to Dana’s knowledge of the future (present?), she wields a power that causes Tom Weylin to fear her and Rufus to respect her more—she acknowledges how she is special and how Rufus treats her differently than the other slaves. However, as she spends more time in the past and lives her day-to-day life there, she loses her power and authority. This is made even more true by the fact that Rufus grows up to be even more cruel and exercises his power: “He hit me. It was a first, and so unexpected that I stumbled backward and fell…It was the breaking of an unspoken agreement between us—a very basic agreement—and he knew it” (Butler 239). Dana lives life on the Weylin plantation everyday for months until it becomes her actual life—it no longer is an act. With how she acts with Rufus, Margaret, and the other slaves in the latter half of the book, Dana realizes how she is not exempt from the way society is structured in the 1800s and it causes her to subconsciously shift her thoughts and actions to adjust to this new reality of hers: they become her immediate thoughts on how to act since she is so accustomed to this time period now. Before, she was more of an outside observer—swooping in for short periods of time to just save Rufus—but it is harder to stay detached when she is so actively involved with the lives of other people there and spends more time there. We see this impact her life in 1976: “The time, the year, was right, but the house just wasn’t familiar enough. I felt as though I were losing my place here in my own time.” (Butler 191). Her notion of what “home” is shifts throughout the novel, even considering the Weylin plantation as more familiar. 

This lack of distance is also made clear with how much harder it is for Dana to return home. She is able to return to her own time when she is fearful of her own life. However, her tolerance shifts the longer she bears witness to the horrors of the 1800s. For example, when she is whipped after working in the fields, she wakes up to Rufus rather than returning home to Kevin. She becomes acclimated with these sights that were only recognizable to her through history textbooks before.

 

Going Viral: The Tie Between Culture and Epidemics in Mumbo Jumbo

Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed tackles the spread of black culture and social dynamics of 1920s America. The book opens up with the description of the main conflict: “Don’t you understand, if this Jes Grew becomes pandemic it will mean the end of Civilization As We Know It?... This is a psychic epidemic, not a lesser germ like typhoid yellow fever or syphilis” (Reed 4-5). Jes Grew, or a signifier of black culture, manifests as a metaphorical disease that spreads across America “following a strange course” such as “Pine Bluff and Magnolia Arkansas…Nashville and Knoxville Tennessee as well as St. Louis” (Reed 13). The choice in depicting black culture as a disease highlights the racial tensions between the predominant white culture, and the upcoming marginalized cultures. It demonstrates the moral panic over jazz and the common ideology that black culture is—like a virus—infecting white culture.

Culture is organic. It’s something that cannot be predicted and grows in its own ways. It’s more of a social phenomenon; something that cannot be created by a single person. In this, it raises the question of where did these cultures come from? Especially with no basis nor known authors, are these cultures just as legitimate without having a single, identifiable originator? Will cultures without a text eventually die out, suggesting that it is less than and will be forgotten? What does it mean that Jes Grew is “seeking its text?” As emphasized by James Weldon Johnson, Jes Grew’s “words were unprintable, but the tune was irresistible, and belonged to nobody.” Ishmael Reed investigates these ideas as the main characters in Mumbo Jumbo all seek for the Text of Jes Grew, all with different motives. Having a text almost immortalizes a culture in history, recording its existence and contextualizing it within the greater scope of history. The greatest indicator of culture is the social responses it brings. Through understanding the context of a culture, only then can one comprehend its significance. Within Mumbo Jumbo, there is a larger cultural, social, and political context to understand for Jes Grew to reach its full importance. We also see this with the work of the Mu’Tafikah: returning artworks that are stranded from its cultural context to its original location, thus restoring its meaning.

Culture is also impacted by its outside influences. When a minority culture is appropriated and taken into the dominant one, it is viewed as less of a threat. The over looming threat of Jes Grew was successfully neutralized as it was able to integrate into the dominant white culture in a way. This is seen with the plans of Hinkle Von Vampton and the Wallflower Order, with Vampton planning to take Jes Grew and appropriate it in order to counteract it. Despite Jes Grew “dying out” in the end, PaPa LaBas explains to Earline that “Jes Grew has no end and no beginning…We will miss it for a while but it will come back, and when it returns we will see that it never left” (Reed 204).

If we take Jes Grew as a larger metaphor for a secondary social phenomenon that attacks the position of the dominant society, examples of Jes Grew are present everywhere. Similar to an epidemic, it’s viewed as a threat until it can be contained. It never truly dies out until it resurges once again. They both spread and go viral in waves. Ishmael Reed highlights the social dynamics of a rising marginalized group and the outbreak and response it elicits from the main group. 

A Character Study of Coalhouse Walker Jr.

In the beginnings of Ragtime, the readers direct most of their attention to the seemingly stagnant unnamed family and their middle-class life in New Rochelle. In part II of the story, E.L. Doctorow introduces a catalyst-like character that drives the plot of the rest of the book: Coalhouse Walker Jr.

The family’s complacency and preexisting ideals are challenged with the introduction of Coalhouse. All of the character’s lives are fundamentally changed (or ended) after this situation. They either find a new purpose or path in life. Ragtime has been interested in the prospect of change since the beginning of the novel. From Harry Houdini’s mid-life crisis and desire to reinvent himself to Mother’s Younger Brother’s newfound position as a revolutionary, the novel is focused on the changes in society at the turn of the twentieth century.

Coalhouse’s interactions with various characters, in particular Father, reveal more about them than Coalhouse himself. His mere existence is a provocation for his white counterparts, subverting their expectations of him, as shown by Father: “Walker didn’t act or talk like a colored man. He seemed to be able to transform the customary differences practiced by his race so that they reflected to his own dignity rather than the recipient’s…Father recognized certain dangers in the man. Perhaps we shouldn’t encourage his suit, he said to Mother” (Doctorow 162). Just like with ragtime music, his mere existence is one that threatens white people. Coalhouse is a character that is significant beyond his own narrative but to the fact that he reveals so much about the characters around him. 

His character is treated with less irony than others, such as Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan, and Doctorow seems to almost humanize him more. The readers are introduced to him during his courtship with Sarah, revealing his good and friendly nature. Doctorow allows us to interpret his character by providing his basis for him. We feel more sympathy for him since we see him as a person and we understand the racial injustices of the time. He frames him in two different lights: a more humane picture in the narrative versus a deranged terrorist from the media.

As Coalhouse spirals with his acts of violence, he begins to become an autonomous character—one that seemingly becomes more historical. Ragtime is a story about racial injustice. One could argue that Coalhouse becomes less of a character and more of a symbol. He becomes a symbol of fighting back and represents a larger cause and movement, as seen in how his group is literally called “Coalhouse.” Within the story, Doctorow often uses free indirect discourse with multiple characters to express their thoughts and what they are thinking. However, there is almost none of that with Coalhouse. Rather, Doctorow maintains a purposeful distance from him—whether it be out of respect or to further the illusion of him being historical—he never goes inside Coalhouse’s mind. Doctorow does not try and speak on behalf of him, he merely recounts a narrative and describes his actions. This omission of information and distance from a character is a tactic that has been frequently employed by Doctorow to make the characters seem more historical. It further pushes the idea that Coalhouse's character is used to represent a larger issue of racial injustice at the time. 

The novel revolves around Coalhouse: he changes the pace of the story, the story continues to morph with the introduction, and the characters are all spurred by his actions. He embodies the notion of change in Ragtime.

x

ALL POSTS AFTER THIS ONE ARE HISTORY AS FICTION