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Jack Ruby's Motives

DeLillo uses various elements of historical fiction to explain the inconsistencies of the story of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. From making small leaps to large jumps in terms of the prevailing historical narrative most present in today’s current society, DeLillo tries to operate on the most likely explanation of what would have happened in order to help bridge the gaps of history. However, one area where his reasoning and judgment about historical likelihoods falls short in terms of explaining the narrative is with the Jack Ruby side story. Jack Ruby being the man responsible for the assassination of Oswald shortly after he assassinates Kennedy, little to nothing is known about his mysterious motives and even in his testimony it is cited as being a crime of passion, motivated by an intense love for his country. DeLillo’s novel only builds on this, establishing Ruby as a patriotic man driven to murder by the death of his president through various narrative to...
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Dana's Complicated Attachment to Rufus

The book Kindred is a complex story about the societal dynamics of antebellum slavery and the result of what would happen if someone from the more modern context of the 1970s were dropped into that time period. How would they fare? Would their ideals and values hold up or would they somehow be transformed by societal pressures? The answer to this question varies greatly based on how much time you were to spend in the past and one’s racial identity. In this case, Dana is a victim of this time travel phenomenon in which she is forcefully transported to the past. Being black, she is thrown into a context in which slavery is prevalent and racism has more obvious institutional power but even more so she is also placed in the heart of the confederate South despite presently living in California. This leads her to have complex interactions with both the white and black members of the mid-sized plantation which she is connected to, particularly with the son of the original plantation owner, Ru...
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Elevating African Culture Through Illuminating African History as a Foundation for Western History

     Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed is a book that in many ways seeks to expand public consciousness of the realm of black art and the extent of black history when it comes to polytheism by calling attention to the rich history of black cultures and the historic white plot to undermine the prominence of black culture within society. The main way it, in turn, uplifts black culture is by shedding light on the ways in which white culture has created this sense of diluted African heritage and made Western Culture out to be the more valid one, largely by forcefully making itself the centerpiece of a global historical narrative. Reed also accomplishes this uplifting of African cultural ideas by shedding light on the power and influentially superior aspects of ancient African culture. Mainly, he highlights the high level of connection they shared with their surroundings, environment, which resulted in their elevated expertise with agriculture. In doing so, Reed can assert the idea ...
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"You can't prove it didn't happen": Narrative tools of Doctorow in blending history with fiction

     In the novel Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow the characters of the story who remain unnamed are constantly intertwined with the real events of history. For the most part, the characters in the story who are unnamed can be regarded as the fictional ones, but the way they interact with reality and the known historical events of the early 20th century is all too real. In order to confuse reality and play with the ideas of postmodernism, Doctorow poses the question of “why shouldn’t this have happened?” through his characters and narrative setup. In almost all of his sub narratives and chaptered sections, Doctorow introduces a historical overlap with his fictional characters that makes use of small anomalies and gaps in historical knowledge within which he can operate due to the lack of credible recorded history within that piece of the timeline. My favorite example of this strategy in the book is his use of the Peary Arctic Expedition, a mission to find the exact northmost poi...
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