"Libra" by Don Delillo Essay

      In Don Dellilo’s “Libra”, he portrays a character that is unable to relate to other people, displays shallow emotional responses to what others would consider more stimulating (whether negative or positive), has had a violent/troubled childhood, and requires a constant source of provocation, which leads him to act impulsively. Using these qualities, the author creates the profile of a violent sociopath. During this essay, I will support this conclusion with examples of tone, diction, and violent imagery.

       The author uses an emotionless tone to portray the observing qualities of the protagonist; he does this by punctuating his writing with short sentences and providing the main character with unaffected reactions to social traumas. This is first shown when he depicts the preteen girls sitting on the bench. He uses a very sexual connotation when describing the jingling of their ankle bracelets and the hum of their murmuring voices, but unlike most preteen boys, the protagonist is unaffected by their calls. Instead, he continues moving away from their charms with a smile on his face that you get the impression has nothing to do with the events transpiring around him. The next example is the way he addresses the woman on the bus next to him, Marguerite. Right away you realize that there is something wrong with the situation, since a child is publically traveling with a drunk female, but this is quickly resolved when it is revealed that this woman is actually his mother. During this paragraph he introduces his own mother as “Marguerite”, which is an example of the aforementioned disconnect with his emotions and the people around him, and it is a testament to how easily he disregards what some would consider a troubling situation. After all, his own mother is drunkenly discussing her shortcomings as a parent with her thirteen or fourteen year old son on a bus ride home from the beach. The third example is found in the fourth paragraph when the narrator graphically details a killing that happened in a candy store. When he describes this, it reads like a news report: “An Italian was murdered in a candy store, shot five times, his brains dashing the wall near the comic-book rack.” Again, this is a preteen boy describing the death of a man he might’ve known or seen around his town, and it sounds completely apathetic. Overall, the emotionless tone used in this passage shows his inability to relate to others his own age, demonstrates his dulled response to emotional sensations, and because of these things, further categorizes him as a sociopath.

      Along with the emotionless tone seen in “Libra”, there is also repeated, violent imagery that is a testament to his aggressive and abusive childhood. The first example of this happens on the derailing trip the protagonist takes with his intoxicated mother. While on the bus, she describes how she had to fire the nanny she had chosen AND move to a new section of town because she found welts on the protagonist’s legs from the nanny whipping him. This begs the question: where is his father? If this small family had had some kind of “protector”, they wouldn’t have relocated their house, so obviously he is not in the picture. This could be alluding to an abusive relationship between the protagonist’s father and mother, but the mother only relocated because the nanny was beating her son, not her. In my opinion, this text is insinuating an abusive relationship between the protagonist and his father that was great enough to cause the mother to leave her husband and move. Either way, it is definitely eluding to the protagonist’s violent upbringing. The next example occurs while the narrator is describing the death of an Italian man. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, it reads like a news report, even though this is obviously a very violent scene being described. But, there is only one thing keeping it from being completely apathetic: the word “dashing”. This is the only adjective used in the small portion of the paragraph describing the man’s death, and it is only used in context with the comic-book section of the candy store. This use of violent imagery is symbolic for the destruction of his youth using the comic books, shows the way that his abusive childhood destroyed his innocence, and demonstrates the way external violence can end a man’s life, literally and figuratively. Furthermore, the fact that protagonist seems unconcerned with all of these events supports my theory of his sociopathic tendencies that originated from a violent childhood.

      Using diction, the author creates a turn in the small passage. This turn occurs when the protagonist rides the subway up to Inwood in the seventh paragraph. Throughout this passage, the protagonist has been little more than bored, and he demonstrates close to no emotion when it comes to pain, trauma, death, happiness, or pleasure.  This is shown when, in the midst of all the terrible things the narrator talks about, he throws in phrases like “making him smile in his secret way”, “his mother sold stockings in Manhattan”, “a woman on the street, completely ordinary”, “a lazy radio voice doing a ballgame”, “It was Sunday, Mother’s Day”, as if the things the protagonist has experienced have had no effect on him, when in fact, many would be emotionally traumatized. After the turn, however, the narrator begins describing things that are alive instead of the death that has permeated the majority of this paragraph, and like the writing, it seems the protagonist has come alive as well. It is no longer enough to the ride the bus to the beach with his mother; he takes it into the dangerous parts of town where the beggars and crazy people live just because he can. Instead of riding it calmly and with purpose like the people who crowd in around him, he jumps the turnstiles, and rides in between the cars, “gripping the heavy chain” outside, and enjoys the fact that one small error in human methodology could kill him. But more than what is physically displayed here, is the psychological effect riding the subway has on him; he thinks it makes him “powerful”, more powerful than the people who are unaware of the energy his surrounding possess, and he feel like he was let in on a “secret” unshared with anybody else. He enjoys the “satisfying wave of rage and pain” the noise of the subway gives him. These impulsive and thrill-seeking actions also identify him as a sociopath, because sociopaths are always in need of stimulus, as they can’t tolerate the thoughts silence brings on.

      In conclusion, the author uses an emotionless tone, violent imagery, and a changing diction to display the sociopathic tendencies of a young boy who would grow up to be the murderer of the 35^th President of the United States.