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How a Manipulator Pushes the Manipulated Over the Edge

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     One of the most interesting characters to me throughout this novel Libra  has been David Ferrie with all his eccentricities. Throughout the story Ferrie attempts to control Lee Harvey Oswald and push him towards becoming his lackie and joining the plan to assassinate President Kennedy. Ferrie seems to adapt mannerisms of a sort of hypnotist, twisting and pulling at Oswald's brain to confuse him until he finally conforms to the plan. Oswald has presented as a mentally weak character throughout the entire novel, and it is fitting in the reader's mind that he can be controlled so easily. Even though the reader may think that Oswald is merely a fool, the tactics that Ferrie uses to finally capitalize on the seeds he planted long ago are quite interesting and I would like to analyze them.     Ferrie opens their final conversation before the shooting with a common technique used by manipulators: gaslighting. Ferrie pressures Oswald with the repetition of the...
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Kindred Time_Warping

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     Throughout Kindred  by Octavia Butler, a common mechanic used in this novel is time travel. This largely is used to fit the purpose of driving the plot along, giving Butler her own voice in the flow of the novel. However, it also fits to better situate the reader among the deeper mannerisms of the book. Personally, I found most impressive the differences (and SIMILARITIES) that Butler attempted to draw between the slavery of old and the more modern 1970s life. Butler was able to compare a wide range of societal subjects by using this time travel, and, because of the way it was implemented, she was able to drive the plot in an immersive way that did not seem beyond out of place for a 21st century reader.      Butler was able to sufficiently implicate her beliefs that society has not fully reformed itself from the time of slavery, likely hinting that she believes that our modern society is not the utopia it is oft made out to be. Power dynamics, sex...
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My Sadness of Mumbo Jumbo (Artificial Intelligence)

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      So, I was thinking while reading Mumbo Jumbo, as most people tend to, and something really intriguing passed through my mind: the entire Talking Android plot would have been cooler in the age of social media. I would say that Hinckle Von Vampton's plan did not go very well, largely because of his inability to create a sufficient Talking Android. I would presume that, if Facebook or Instagram were to have existed at the time, this task would have been much simpler and effective. Given that there were numerous officials who did in fact believe that Hubert "Safecracker" Gould was actually a prominent black poet, there would undoubtedly be many more online who would have fallen prey to these lies. Papa LaBas would have a much more difficult job unearthing the falsities proposed over the Internet, and it would have been easier to spread the message to discredit Jes Grew.      Hinckle Von Vampton, if he could have figured out how to create any sort of socia...
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The Mid-Life Crisis

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    Something I felt myself witnessing numerous times throughout Ragtime was how many characters seemed to be lost amongst themselves, discontent with their current situation. The inward searching seems to drive much of the book's early plot, at least from the depiction of the story shown to us by Doctorow. It appears to me that, at least in my opinion, a central theme of this book is the mid-life crisis.      The book seems to begin with many characters in a situation of rest. Life is in a happy state for many people, and few seem discontent with their present manner. There are minor foreshadowings, such as the early signs of marital disagreement between Mother and Father. The world has been apparently thrown into turmoil by the killing of Stanford White though, igniting the plotlines to change everyone's lives forever. Evelyn Nesbit is now convinced that she will become richer than ever imagined, as she "had agreed to testify on [Harry K. Thaw's] behalf f...
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