Don DeLillo’s novel Libra (1988) offers a fictional account of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life and death. What follows is an account of the novel’s plot and theme.
PLOT
- Lee Harvey Oswald is a directionless boy who seeks access to a secret world.
- Three men connected with American intelligence conspire to nearly assassinate the president so that the US will invade Cuba.
- Oswald goes back and forth between the Soviet Union and US in his politics and geography.
- Oswald agrees to assassinate the president but finds himself in a larger conspiracy when it comes to executing his plan.
- Oswald dies, but his name lives on.
THEME
The novel’s subject is history. Several characters comment on history’s meaning. Oswald believes, “There is a world inside the world.” David Ferry tells Oswald that history is “the sum total of all the things they aren’t telling us.” The historian Nicholas Branch who is asked to provide the definitive account of the case, feels like he’s working on a “theology of secrets.”
The word “theology” indicates the novel’s actual theme. The novel shows that confronted with the mystery of history, we need to believe in a coherent explanation. This is not only true individually but corporately. The secret world that Oswald seeks is divine providence. The government offers a pale substitute in place of the Lord’s secrets (cf. Deuteronomy 29:29)e.
Experiments in Criticism 