All posts from now on are for history as fiction

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Nicholas Branch and the Futility of Evidence

     In Libra ’s plot, Nicholas Branch takes the role of a parallel character, who looks back on the main storyline we live through with Oswald and Everett, except he does it through artifacts and evidence. When we first meet him, Branch has been trying to write a secret history of JFK’s assassination for the CIA for over 15 years. As the reader moves through Lee Harvey Oswald’s life and Win Everett’s plan with the CIA, they watch the events leading up to the assassination unfold to create a narrative explanation for Oswald’s involvement in President Kennedy’s death. While the reader goes through these plots, they also get flashes of Nicholas Branch’s current state as he tries to understand the events by working backwards through evidence. However, at the end of the book, while the reader finally comes to understand the story behind the assassination, Branch descends further into a hole of confusion, surrounded by piles upon piles of evidence, none of which reveals the tr...
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The "Freedom" of Sweet Home

In the story of Beloved, Sweet Home plays a central role in the “rememory” of the characters. Though at first only alluded to, the story of the Sweet Home plantation and how it relates to the current situations and behaviors of the main characters slowly unfolds throughout the book. Before the arrival of schoolteacher, Sweet Home and its owners, Mr. and Mrs. Garner, seem to have been “compassionate” towards the enslaved people that worked there. The Sweet Home men: Paul A, Paul D, Paul F, Sixo, and Halle, were known throughout the area as unique in their position as slaves because they were treated like men by Mr. Garner. He gave them a certain level of respect, and he even allowed the men to have guns, which was unheard of at the time. However, how much autonomy did the Sweet Home men truly have? Though the Sweet Home men had independence and dignity under their original owner, that does not change the fact that they were “owned.” The only reason Paul D. and his brothers had these pri...
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Rufus: "Her Little Jackass"

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