Rebuilding and retelling a narrative

We talked in class about how Lee has an interesting character where he is always thinking about himself in the third person, and obsesses over how his story will be told when he dies. He's always trying to enter the frame of history, after a life on the fringe of society, and is constantly revising the stories he tells others. He has this second personality almost, where when he is reciting his life story to someone, he is simultaneously thinking about the fact that he's telling the story. It's hard to explain, but I'll give a few examples. 

When telling Konno about the spy plane:

"He paused, measuring how he felt. Inside the bouncy music and applause, he occupied a pocket of calm. He was not connected to anything here and not quite connected to himself and he spoke less to Konno than to the person Konno would report to, someone out there, in the floating world, a collector of loose talk, a specialist who lived in the dark like the men with bright lips and spun-silk wigs … He barely noticed himself talking … The more he spoke, the more he felt he was softly  split in two." (89-90)

Lee had his own "Historic Diary"which he intended to be read later by people who would study him as  a revolutionary (149). 

Lee kept revising the way he would tell his story of the shooting of the President. At first, he was ready to name all the other names of the people in the conspiracy, but later decided that he looked more heroic  and historical if he portrayed the story with him as a lone gunman (434). He predicted that "People will come to see him, the lawyers first, then psychologists, historians, biographers. His life had a single clear subject now, called Lee Harvey Oswald," (435). Lee was preparing to rebuild his own life story again now that he had successfully gone from the fringes of history to the center of the action. 

I see an interesting parallel between Lee's obsession with revising and retelling his story to fit it into a larger historical narrative and our own obsession with social media. 

In different situations I sometimes catch myself thinking--and I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this--things like:

"Oh, if only I had my camera with me this would make a cool instagram post."

"That quote would get so many retweets on twitter, I better write it down so I don't forget." 

"This Facebook post would get so many likes if I wrote it this way." 

Most of the time it's little things that don't matter that much, but in my head I can construct them or frame them in a certain way that would make me look good on social media. Moments like these give me a feeling of not being totally involved in whatever activity it is that I'm doing, but instead looking at it from a "distance" and analyzing its value if it were applied to social media.

It's also similar to Lee in the way that the only reason why anyone posts on social media is to get attention from their peers. Lee's Historical Diary was not written for him, but for the people who would read it later and put it into the history books that he foresaw being written about his life in Russia. Lee's one goal in life was to merge with history, and make something of his life--to prove something to the people around him. Social media, too, is a medium where people try to shape and construct a story that proves their worth in the world and the human narrative.