Brief Discussion of Identity in Libra

I think that this blog post may leak over into becoming a few posts. If we were going to have a response paper I'd probably write about something like this but choose a more specific focus. On the blog I can just riff.

A good place to start when talking about identity is names. Many of the characters in Libra have aliases and false names. One reason for this could be an attempt to dissociate with what they do in their jobs and differentiate that from their home lives. This desire for dissociation and differentiation probably stems from a desire to protect their loved ones and their family lives. The CIA guys that do a bunch of high level intelligence work and then go home to their families and they don't want to lose that. They want that life to be a part of them too.

Which brings me to my next idea, lifestyle and its affect on a person's sense of identity. Each name sort of corresponds to a life, thus the people in the book employ different aliases at different times depending on what they need to do. Lee has one hitch in his transformation from one guy to another, he has his wife and his children. I would speculate that he hates needing and loving her is because it frustrates him that she forces him to keep that familial side of him and he can't completely disappear into the world of lives he created for himself. He doesn't want to have connections, yet, Marina keeps him connected. I also think that this association between her and his emotional side is the reason he beats her. He beats her out of frustration and ultimately, to try and beat down the side of him that she represents.

Appearance too has an affect on identity and how someone is perceived. For example, David Ferrie makes himself have a striking appearance and he quickly becomes recognizable to the reader as "the guy with no hair" or the "kinda creepy looking one." He owns his disease and consciously makes an effort to make his appearance part of his identity. Lee too exhibits many changes in appearance. When we looked at pictures of him in class, I was commenting to someone about how he looked different in every picture. I think it's Marina or maybe his mother at the end that notes how different he looks in jail.

This wishy-washy changing identity stuff is the stuff that conspiracy theories are made of. Theorists take these small discrepancies in identity, particularly in Lee, and make the leap to suggesting that there were multiple "Lee"s . Double, triple, or seemingly infinite layers of life set the foundations for a good thriller.