Everything from here on is History as Fiction

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Ruby’s View on the Conspiracy

While we may never know what the real Jack Ruby thought of Oswald and assassination as a whole, DeLillo portrays Jack Ruby as an overly patriotic man who despises Oswald, viewing him as a “complete nothing, a zero person in a T-shirt” (DeLillo 421). Ironically, Ruby is known to history solely as a player part of the Oswald conspiracy, and for DeLillo’s Ruby, this association to Oswald leaves him in a difficult mental state. DeLillo offers the reader some of Ruby’s thoughts while in jail, and we see how the conspiracy has taken over his mind completely, reaching a point where he views himself and Oswald as one of the same. His thoughts also show how he simultaneously regrets killing Oswald, making references to Jews who will suffer because of this, and how he still feels a small bit of pride, by reading the telegrams of those who supported his killing of Oswald. Essentially, Ruby feels overwhelmed by the conspiracy like no one else in the book, by having his entire mental state deteri...
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Kevin's Transformation

Kevin’s actions in the first few chapters of Kindred cause the reader to question his morals and relation to Alice. Kevin himself is also a questionable guy; for example, when we are first properly introduced to him, Dana describes his “pale, almost colorless eyes that made him seem distant and angry whether he was or not,” that he used “to intimidate people” (Butler 13). While Dana defends Kevin, arguing that his eyes are only lifeless to strangers and that for those that he really cares for, he isn’t so soulless and harsh, many readers end up still finding Kevin unsettling because of the actions he has done while married with Dana and when in the nineteenth century, notably his somewhat positive perception of the Weylin plantation. However, after Kevin is stuck in the past for 5 years, he comes out a different man, as while he is more detached from the world (rightfully so, as the modern day is foreign to him after living in the antebellum South), he seems to have transformed by bein...
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Reed’s Lampoons

As discussed in class, chapter 26 of Mumbo Jumbo has Reed go on a tangent of sorts, spending about a page discussing the objects on Abdul’s desk. While its inclusion in the story may seem random and not bearing any significance to the story, I found that it provides the reader with the tools to make a simple connection: while the white colonists are the subject of the African’s lampoons, the Wallflower Order, and really anyone of the white race in Mumbo Jumbo , act as Reed’s lampoons. This connection makes even more sense when you consider the book itself as a work of art, satirizing in the same manner as the Africans. In fact, Reed himself points out how the African race “had quite a sense of humor,” which was lacking in modern African-American works (Reed 96). It makes sense that Reed wants to use his book as a way to bring back the original African style of art, using irony and satire to make profound points, so he does so in Mumbo Jumbo by targeting the Wallflower Order, and to an...
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