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

the President.’” Ferrie is trying to forge “’a connection’” between the lines, based on
“dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self.’” 356
In the end, Oswald takes part in the plot, shooting at Kennedy from the Texas
School Book Depository. The fatal head shot is fired, however, from the Grassy Knoll by
CIA operatives and anti-Castro Cubans. DeLillo has Jack Ruby silence Oswald by
killing him because the Dallas nightclub owner is in financial straits and had sought help
from the mob to bail him out. A fictional New Orleans gangster named Carmine Latta –
clearly patterned after real crime boss Carlos Marcello – bankrolled the plot and
arranging for Ruby to kill Oswald.
DeLillo’s novel is itself a balancing act between history and fiction, in which
known facts mingle with speculation. The author explained that “While drawing from
the historical record, I’ve made no attempt to furnish factual answers to any question
raised by the assassination…I’ve altered and embellished reality, extended real people
into imagined space and time, invented incidents, dialogues, and characters” – all a part
of an effort to “fill some of the blank spaces in the known record.” 357 The plot outlined
by DeLillo is not wholly convincing, given the coincidences involved and the grafting of
a truly Marxist Oswald onto a right-wing plot. It is also hard to believe a conspirator
would plan originally to miss Kennedy. Overall, however, DeLillo has written a major
literary work that paints a compelling picture of Oswald in which he resembles the
Warren Commission’s portrait of the loner Marxist, but finds himself in an existential
356 DeLillo, 379.
357 DeLillo, 458.
159