individual power vs fate + coincidence

One of the main things about the book that struck me was the desire for individuality and individual strength in a world where the individual does and does not matter. Oswald’s background is marked by this dichotomy—a perpetual dropout and semi-malcontent who always seems to get into fights, Oswald is marked by a desire for greatness and difference from those around him. There seems to be a fascination with movie stars (the scene with John Wayne)–and his notably stilted conversation with the radar operator Bushnell after Oswald shot himself suggests the pervasive influence of outside factors. I just kept thinking of common movie tropes (like the power of the individual, black and white morality, big masculine heroes always getting the girl) and how they influence everyone, not just Oswald. He is struggling with desperateness to be something, to, in spite of Oswald’s almost unending mediocrity, mean something.

In contrast to this, Libra also sets up the idea of an overwhelming societal force/web of connections that dominates the flow of events—a young Oswald and Ferrie talking about a .22 caliber rifle, the passing discussions of Jack Ruby haunting New Orleans before he shows up in Dallas, and so on. Following a conversation between Parmenter and (um, the guy with the crazy ass name. George de blahblahblah), Parmenter goes on one of his mystic rants about how we're all linked in coincidence and suspicion. Later, when Banister discusses why he doesn’t like Kennedy, part of his dislike seems to stem from how much of an idealized individual that Kennedy is. It is Bannister that refers to forces in the air that drive society, and indeed that seems to be true for large sections of the novel—with the increasing dovetailing between the fictionalized assassin Lee Harvey Oswald that Everett and his group are looking for and the actual Lee Harvey Oswald—that suggests the primacy of coincidences, to the point where coincidences dominate and may replace reality. However, the last lines of the book suggest that Lee Harvey Oswald did have his impact—that his name, for better or worse, will live on in history, and in a world where the individual seems to have simultaneously less and more power in the web of coincidences. It's daunting, how many interpretations can stem from the plot of this novel. But I guess that's just like the real assassination.