*This post is talking about a scene that is in the final In Dallas. So go read that first.
Beryl intrigued me more and more as the novel went on. She
is by no means a primary character, nothing like Jack Ruby or Oswald or Marina,
but her presence at the end of the book felt important to me. She’s just
sitting there, watching and rewatching the assassination of Oswald, knowing
that she’s supposed to feel something like satisfaction, but she can’t. It’s
only a sad experience. That said, she continues watching and is unable to pull
herself away because it just keeps replaying over and over. “She felt morally
bound to watch.” (DeLillo 446).
On the one hand, Beryl is interested in the shooting: “The
camera doesn’t catch all of it. There seem to be missing frames, lost levels of
information. Brief and simple as the shooting is, it is too much to take in,
too mingled in jumped-up energies. Each new showing reveals a detail” (DeLillo
446). The way this is phrased reminds me of Nicholas Branch and the entire
conspiracy theory culture out there around the JFK shooting. Each time people
look at the assassination, a new plot aspect or piece of evidence is
considered. Throughout the novel, Nicholas Branch is overwhelmed by the amount
of information, but there seems to perpetually be something missing.
Beryl is not by any means rooting for Oswald; she remembers
Kennedy fondly and does not like Oswald. She understands Jack Ruby’s motives
and even realizes that hers are somewhat similar. But she still questions why
they keep showing the Oswald assassination: “We want him [Oswald] out of here
too. And now he’s gone but it isn’t helping at all” (DeLillo 446).
Beryl cries when Oswald is shot, and yet she keeps watching
because of “something in Oswald’s face” (DeLillo 447). She feels bad for Oswald
and at the same time is curious about what Oswald knows. She seems to pick up
on the fact that Lee was living his life for history: “He is commenting on the
documentary footage even as he is being shot. Then he himself is shot, and
shot, and shot, and the look becomes another kind of knowledge. But he has made
us a part of his dying” (DeLillo 447).
This passage has been sticking with me. Beryl seems relatable
for me and my opinions of Libra and
the JFK conspiracies as a whole. On the one hand, I am interested in finding
out what really happened. To some extent, it is a feeling of being “morally
bound” to be interested; someone shot the president. Almost all my instincts
are programmed to find the truth; that is the moral thing. I should want to
know what actually happened. And to some extent I do, but I question what would
come from knowing the truth. What issues would it actually resolve? JFK is
killed, Lee is killed, Jack Ruby dies. If we know what actually happened, would
that add to or take away from the tragedy? I'm always down to hear a good conspiracy theory, but part of me wonders what they actually do in terms of helping.
