Imbalanced Libra

As one of the representative works of Don DeLillo,Libra is set in America in the mid-20^th century.Adapted from the famous event of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Assassination,Libra offers a specific and vivid description of the“murderer”Oswald's growth experience and the unknown conspiracy behind president assassination.Don DeLillo captures the life of common people in modern American society with an extremely keen insight.In Libra,the anxiety of the characters who are trapped in the trivial everyday life is revealed through his delicate and profound writing.At the same time,the depressing and perverted social environment in America in the 1950s and 1960s,and the tense and suspicious atmosphere in the Cold War period due to heated international political struggle are skillfully presented in the novel.Based on the anxiety theory put forward by Rollo May,Karen Horney,and other researchers,this thesis concentrates on identity crisis,emotional alienation,and technology siege,conducting a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the anxiety phenomena and causes in the novel,so as to explore the spiritual conflict and terrible life predicament of modern people who live in a tense,uneasy and materialized“age of anxiety”.The main characters in Libra,including Lee Harvey Oswald and Marguerite,are the“marginal men”in American society.With a profound perception of the world,they are much more likely to fall into the anxious and dysphoric state.As a member of the lower class,Oswald is a“zero”in the meritocratic society;teetering on the brink of culture,he also suffers from the cultural anxiety.The characters are faced with the contradiction between pursuing love and escaping love because of the abnormality of parent-child relationship and alienation of marital relationship;only authentic communication can relieve the emotional anxiety.The emergence of the technical age brings the previously inchoate and“free-floating”anxiety of many people into sharp focus;it is easy for the characters to feel trampled on account of the threat of Panopticon network and cognitive impairment in the information society.Through intensive study,a conclusion is drawn that Libra reflects the characters'complex inner conflicts behind anxiety,as well as the psychological imbalance and the survival predicament of modern people.The thesis helps to provide more inspiration for modern people to face and overcome anxiety to realize self-reconstruction.It is crucial for getting out of anxiety to take constructive methods according to the causes.