Oswald's Narcissism

    DeLillo refers to Lee Harvey Oswald’s smirk multiple times throughout the novel. Oswald is additionally accompanied by his notorious facial expression in several photographs, one of the most famous examples being his mugshot, photographed the day after Kennedy’s assassination.

    In the scene when Oswald walks into Banister’s office to inquire about a position with the firm, he is identified by his “little smile that seemed to say, Here I am—just the fellow you’ve been waiting for” (DeLillo 130). DeLillo’s characterization of Oswald’s smirk mirrors the way in which Oswald views himself—just the fellow everyone has been waiting for, bound for greatness and glory.
 
    Oswald is deeply obsessed with the notion of his superiority and importance. In other words, he’s a huge narcissist. Even in high school, he spends hours in the library, seeking out advanced books for the pure purpose of feeling intellectually superior to his classmates. Given his young age combined with some form of dyslexia, he isn’t even able to comprehend the dense political and economic theory he is “reading,” as DeLillo notes that “he had to fight to make some elementary sense of what he read” (34). Lee is mostly pleased with the idea itself that he is interested in subjects like these, while his classmates “had their civics and home economics” (33). 

    Lee’s narcissism is similarly reflected when he attempts to defect to the USSR. On the morning of the occasion, Oswald carefully gets ready for his big day, and pauses to dramatically look at himself in the mirror, with DeLillo declaring, “He was a man in history now” (149). Yet, when he attempts to apply for citizenship, explaining his backstory and “what it meant for him to live in the Soviet Union,” Oswald is met with rejection. The moment he envisioned, in which the Soviets would admire and glorify him for his defection, is shattered. Lee is so destroyed by the news that he makes the immediate decision to end his life. Even in the following moments, between descriptions of his attempt to kill himself, Lee’s narcissism is still present. He imagines “hurried calls to officials at their homes” and “hurried calls to Texas,” demonstrating his never-ending desire for attention (152).

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