Marinating in Communist Ideology: Trotsky's Pure Form
Lee Oswald's radicalization in DeLillo's Libra begins not with political fury towards society, but rather from personal emptiness. In capitalist America, Lee feels invisible: due to his upbringing, he feels like a "zero in the system" (40). For Lee, his ideology is a therapeutic cure for his own troubled life---he willingly adopts the title "communist" to transform his painful isolation into a noble, ideological struggle that mirrors Leon Trotsky's life. In this sense, he sees himself as some martyr for communism, whose struggle and suffering is necessary for a greater cause. From his school library, Lee repeatedly checks out Marxist books. He enjoys seeing "[the] silly faces [of his classmates] crinkle up" as they read the title of his books; Lee explains that "[he] was the product of a sweeping history, he and his mother, locked into a process, a system of money and property that diminished their human worth every day, as if by scientifi...