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 tools. But DeLillo is capable of suggesting more through the use of historical fiction narratives, insinuating that there could have been more complex motives at play, including self-preservation linked to his mob affiliations. DeLillo makes sure not to assume that Ruby was perfectly truthful in his testimony despite his mobster past and rightly goes deeper into whether this assassination was strategic or patriotic.

DeLillo teases the idea of patriotic ties potentially playing an influence, almost as if to give the testimony some ounce of credit, but ultimately introduces subtle plot features that suggest something deeper at play. At surface level, DeLillo constantly references Ruby’s inexplicable acts of national pride woven through the main storyline. We see him well-up as a patriotic radio show comes on, we see him talk about his immense sadness upon hearing about the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. These all point to the prevailing motive story, helping support the idea that Oswald killing was inspired by an overwhelming sense of national pride that drove Ruby to murder the killer of Kennedy out of revenge. This idea is even further supported as another potential supporting piece of evidence that Ruby’s killing of Oswald was a crime of passion is his unstable mental state. We see this become believable through DeLillo’s random insertion of fictional historical scenes which add depth to the characters. Ruby is given significant dimensional depth when he is shown to excessively beat a man who harrassed one of his workers at the nightclub. Ruby takes out his anger on the man, largely a product of feeling financial powerlessness from his earlier encounter with a mobster loan shark who tells him he is running out of ability to dodge the IRS and must pursue monetary support from shadier means if he wants to stay in business. The man is severely beaten, and from this we can see Jack Ruby as a man subject and easily controlled by his emotions. In a moment where the ultimate source of American national pride, the president, is killed, it becomes easy to see how Ruby might act out in supposed defense of his nation.

However, what we see truly come to light is the idea that Ruby’s motivations and intentions may have been more closely related to his mob ties and financial problems which he is implied to have solved by approaching a loan shark. Running a nightclub, Ruby was seeing troubles keeping the business afloat and struggles to make his monthly rent payments and keep his staff in good standing. Although a scene where he decides to accept help from the mob never truly comes about in the chapter, Ruby seems to have no other choice, leading the reader to believe this is the decision he made, and maybe implying that he owed a favor to the mob. This favor, in fact, may have been the murder of Oswald driven by a mob desire to keep the plot silent and to keep some deeper motives in the dark, so that Oswald would be prevented from testifying against the mob. Additionally his ties to the police station can be interpreted as more than just a move based on patriotism. The actual killing happens in the basement of the Dallas police station and since Ruby was a well-known frequenter of the station who often dropped off food for the officers on duty, he may have been trusted personnel capable of entering the exclusive area which ultimately allowed him to get close enough to Oswald to kill him.

All these non-patriotic explanations are merely speculative, but it does make sense that a man like Jack Ruby would not be willing to entirely throw his life away from one patriotic episode that drove him to a murder of passion. These offer more depth into a case that is already shrouded with mystery, and with how much is still unknown about the case, it’s not unthinkable or unsurprising that there would be something deeper at play when it comes to Jack Ruby’s motives for killing Oswald.