Lee as a Product of His Times

Lee Harvey Oswald, as Don DeLillo portrays him, grows up as a loner in New York City, living alone with his mother in shabby living quarters and with nothing in the world going for him. The 50s mean prosperity for the middle class and rich in the United States but for children like Lee, no one cares much whether or not they go to school and he's essentially put out to find his own way in the world. Lee tries to make sense of this world, and he finds his avenue in doing so by reading the texts of Karl Marx. 

Most people know of Karl Marx as the father of communism and for his famous pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto. However, Marx's magnum opus is Das Kapital or Capital, an incredibly extensive work of political economy spread out over three giant volumes. Das Kapital, while doing many things, is a critique of capitalism and production under capitalism and some of the contradictions and crises that arise under a capitalist society. Marxist historiography, a way of understanding the pattern of history, sees the flow of history and societal relations through the lens of class conflict and how societies are divided over class, especially under capitalism. 

Lee adopts the same way of looking at his own world around him. While one can argue whether or not Lee understands much of Capital, he starts seeing the surroundings over him through this Marxist lens. Lee sees his condition as part of a broader trend of capitalism which has benefited people at the top tremendously but left people of Lee's status in society behind. As DeLillo writes on page 41, "The books themselves were secret. ... They altered the room, charged it with meaning. The drabness of his surroundings, his own shabby clothes were explained and transformed by these books. He saw himself as part of something vast and sweeping. 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 scientific law. The books made him part of something." (41) Das Kapital isn't just a work of scholarly literature that Lee reads for the enrichment of his mind but the sheer existence of the books and what they say transform the meaning of his life, telling him that the drabness of his life is not unique to him but part of a broader societal trend, something that needs to be fought in some way or the other. 

This way in which Lee sees his life as part of a larger metanarrative takes shape over the course of the novel as Lee not only identifies himself as part of a historical trend but wants to become that history. He sees his time in prison in Japan similar to that spent by communist revolutionaries, such as Trotsky. He wants to go to Cuba and become part of the revolution to overthrow capitalism, although Fidel Castro and other Cuban officials don't seem to be as enthusiastic about Lee as he is about them. He has a photoshoot in his yard, trying to create photographs to send to Cuba of him fighting the revolution with his rifle and communist pamphlets. One can argue whether Lee's efforts are truly revolutionary or he's just some rando who's a failure in life but thinks he's better than anyone. Still, like almost everyone, Lee is a product of the society around him, which makes it hard in ways to blame him for the track he got himself onto.