Trotsky’s name was Bronstein
Throughout Don DeLillo’s Libra, we follow Lee Harvey Oswald in his journey to become “a man in history,” but it’s never clear what Oswald really means by this. Oswald himself would say that he wants to become a famous revolutionary, like Lenin, Trotsky, or Marx. It's not clear whether Oswald ever consciously wanted to be known as an assassin, or to become one of the most infamous killers in American history, but the way he views himself and his obsession with being remembered in history can explain why he became one.
Scattered throughout the novel, Oswald mentions different famous revolutionaries and their aliases: “Trotsky’s name was Bronstein,” “Lenin’s name was not really Lenin,” and “Stalin’s name was Dzhugashvili” (DeLillo 236, 34) These moments intrigued me, because it seemed to portray Oswald's inner-monologue reminding himself of who these famous historical figures started as. Each one of them has a name separate from the one associated with their historical identity, representing a time in their lives before they had become men in history. Oswald gives himself quite a few aliases as the novel progresses, including Alek Hidell, Leon, and many variations on his original name. All of these aliases represent different moments in his life, whether that be his time in the army, his time in the Soviet Union, or back in the US when the assassination plot is introduced to him. All of these names represent a possible moment when he could have entered history, and he takes all of these names up whenever he has the intention of doing something worthy of historical recognition.
Oswald was the perfect candidate to be the assassin from the beginning, with his obsession with communist revolutionaries, his deep disillusionment with the American political system, and his admiration for Fidel Castro, but the trait that eventually made him the best person to be manipulated (at least in Don DeLillo’s telling of the story) to assassinate JFK was his impressionability and desire for historical recognition. I don’t necessarily think Oswald’s goal was to be remembered as an assassin; he was led to believe that this assassination would put him in a good place with Castro, and make him gain some respect from other communists. Oswald’s desire to be “a man in history” was easily exploited, making him the perfect candidate to be the assassin. Whether it be his one-person Fair Play for Cuba Committee, or his self-proclaimed “historical” diary, Oswald always meant to be remembered in history, and lived his life with that as a driving motive for most of his actions. Oswald created all of these aliases, hoping one of them could be the one remembered in history like Trotsky or Stalin, but the name that landed in history was his full legal name. This fits with Lee’s own observation early in the novel that “Once you did something notorious, they tagged you with an extra name, a middle name that was ordinarily never used” (DeLillo 198). It’s not clear to me that Oswald ever meant for his name in history to include his middle name that was ordinarily never used. The way that Don DeLillo paints Lee Harvey Oswald, he would have been happier to be remembered as Hidell or Leon, the revolutionary, not as Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin. Throughout the book, though, Oswald makes it clear that he is willing to do whatever it takes to be remembered, and in his case, the easiest way to be remembered was to be remembered in infamy.
DeLillo, Don. Libra. Viking, 1988.
