[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

assassination, as well as explicit sexual scenes (Wilson was a former editor at Playboy)
Nazi zombies, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, an anarchistic pirate submarine captain, and
a talking telepathic dolphin named Howard. The Kennedy assassination is described as
the result of multiple gunmen reflecting separate conspiracies involving Lee Harvey
Oswald, the Illuminati, the CIA, mafia, and even John Dillinger, who it turns out did not
die at the hands of the FBI in Chicago in the 1930’s. Oswald – who is a lone gunman
seeking to transcend “time and hazard, heredity and environment” and to fell a “Tyrant” -
- is in the Texas School Book Depository aiming his weapon when “his mouth falls open
in astonishment as three shots ring out, obviously, from the direction of the Grassy Knoll
and Triple Underpass.” As a result, Oswald achieves “omniscience” instead of
“omnipotence” and his later smirk before the media and police showed “I know
something you don’t know.” 318 The smirk is erased by Ruby.
In this portrayal, Oswald is a lone nut gunman who actually does not kill Kennedy
but finds himself in the middle of multiple conspiracies, reflecting Thornley’s ideas about
Oswald as well as his chaotic thoughts about religion, the individual, and conspiracies.
Wilson and Shea wrote in the conclusion of the trilogy that Oswald was the “Hero of a
series of novels by [Warren Commission critic] Harold Weissburg [sic],” the “Villain of
another novel” called the Warren Commission, and “featured in other works of fiction by
[other Commission critics].” 319 This post-Modern ambiguity reflected the Discordian
precept that “All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in
318
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, (New York: Dell
Publish, 1988 (1975)), 28.
319
Shea and Wilson, 801-802.
143