Like I previously said, quite a bit of our conversations in class end up being centered around Lee and whether or not fate may be involved in his life. The way I read the class initially was that it was kind of a joke, but then Ferrie brought it up to Lee and suddenly we all started to legitimately think about whether Lee's life is being steered by a force like fate. Things juts align too well for Lee's involvement in the conspiracy, such as him somehow always being in the right (or wrong) place just when it's most crucial, he's already made multiple false identities for himself right when he needs to, the place he works just happens to be a prime snipers nest just to name a few. It seems too perfect, even if yet another outside party was steering Lee. Maybe it is just coincidence, maybe it is something more, but we'll never know. Personally, I'm skeptical that fate had anything to do with Lee, but I will say, it's pretty convincing even if DeLillo is inserting things here and there to make it seem like fate is active in this plot.
Friday, May 11, 2018
Fate or Coincidence?
Most of our discussion the past week has been about Lee. This is fairly obvious considering he's a main character and we've nearly reached the climatic event, but compared to previous discussions on Lee they've been different. We aren't talking about him per se, or even how deeply connected he is to a larger group of people that guided him, but rather fate and whether or not it really exists for Lee. Now, we may have an answer to that when we think to our lives, but when we think about it in terms of Lee and the bizarre events that have all somehow led up to this oddly perfect plan (in theory), it seems like there may be more than meets the eye. Once again, there is the possibility of us just being human and trying to find a pattern in anything remotely similar, so that's important to keep in mind.
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I think a lot of historical events happen by just the slimmest of chances, including this one. Those always make for the best narratives as you get a lot of “what if’s”
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot in Libra (and the actual historical event) that just seems to work out too perfectly. But I guess in some ways that's just life and how we remember things. When we look back, it's a lot easier to draw connections between things and see how perfectly and by how slim of a margin things work out, even if at the time we don't notice.
ReplyDeleteReading all of Ferrie’s manipulative sections was particularly striking and to be honest scary because of this very reason. On one hand, you know that this is just Ferrie being super manipulative and trying to force Lee to do what he wants, but on the other hand, all of the connections he makes are absolutely true. After all, what is the chance that at the job that Lee landed through his wife he would happen to overlook the very place that Kennedy would drive through, after his initial tour had been cancelled? It seems like coincidence layered on coincidence, a little too clean to be truly random, but too out of human control to be someone’s doing. The idea that there could be a concept like predestination or fate is super scary in my opinion, and it only gives another element of meaning to conspiracies, and how much they depend on chance.
ReplyDeleteI feel like there has to be an element of fate no matter what. No one could have planned the way Lee's childhood played out, the place he was born, his brother going into the army, etc. At the same time, I feel like this argument revolves around a larger idea about whether there is a deity who controls these events or if these events happen independently, your personal beliefs have to sway you one way or the other.
ReplyDelete"Fate" is maybe only gauged in retrospect: something seems "fated" when we look back and get the illusion that there's no other way the narrative could have gone. Are there forces in the universe ensuring that JFK's motorcade would pass under Oswald's window at the book depository? A Ferrie puts it, "We call it coincidence because we don't know what else to call it." By the same token, perhaps, we also call it "fate" because we don't know what else to call it. The fact is, for all the plotting and conspiracy and world-shaking consequences of Lee's act, if the president's planners had mapped a slightly different motorcade route through Dallas, or if Marina's friend hadn't called the book depository weeks earlier to ask about a job for the husband of a friend, everything would have gone differently--we wouldn't even be having this conversation more than 50 years later. It sure *feels* like "fate" in retrospect. But are we just *projecting* a constellation or perceiving a pattern that "is there" already?
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