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

someone posing as a leftist and reporting on what he finds. Ferrie asks, “Why do you
want a job doing undercover work for the anti-Castro movement when it’s clear to me
that you’re a Castro partisan, a soldier for Fidel?” Lee responds with “his funny little
smile.” 350 He cooperates to some extent and for his own motivation with the CIA and
FBI. Oswald is fatalistically riding the conspiracy toward its end just as he rode the
subway at the beginning of the novel. “Summer [in New Orleans before the
assassination] was building toward a vision, a history. He felt he was being swept up,
swept along, doing with being a pitiful individual, done with isolation.” 351
Ferrie plays a key role in the novel in convincing Oswald to voluntarily take part
in the plot, applying pressure through verbal arguments and sex. In a key scene, Ferrie
and Clay Shaw talk to Oswald about his astrological sign as a “Libra,” the title of the
novel. DeLillo never explains what role Shaw played in his fictional plot, but Shaw
described a Libran as “The Balance,” someone who is “Poised to make the dangerous
leap.” Ferrie describes Libra as “The Scales.” 352 The references indicate that Oswald is
the key, influencing him to take part in the plot will tip the scales to success, killing
Kennedy and suggesting Castro is to blame, thereby galvanizing the American people in
an anti-Communist crusade. It is Ferrie’s job to make Oswald tip the scales. As Ferrie
tells Oswald that he “believes in his heart that he’s a dedicated leftist. But he is also a
350 DeLillo, 317.
351 DeLillo, 322.
352 DeLillo, 315.
157