I thought ending with the burial and the reaction of Oswald's family to the incident was a good way to finish the book. Also the inclusion of all the other possible links to conspiracy theories like the deaths of the many people associated with the killings soon after the murder of the president was a good touch.This chapter really worked to build my sympathy for Oswald. Presenting this view that he was sent down the wrong path, one that basically selected him for the task of shooting the president. From such an early age it almost seem he was picked out for the task. We compare him to his normal brother Robert who never got caught up with anything like what Oswald had. It really works to back up this idea that Oswald was almost powerless to his own situation. The images of Oswald on his roof looking at the stars and his happy love for his dog that his mother recalls really works to build a sense of sorrow for Oswald, almost like it almost wasn't his fault he shot the president. It's odd how we can feel such sympathy for someone who killed such a man as the president of the united states.
This chapter does a good job of recapping the general events of the story for me and coming up with a good way to frame the possible conspiracies in the readers mind so that they can come to there own conclusions about Oswald and the murders. Conclusions that I think its fair to say couldn't be reached through digging meticulously through facts and other such random bits of information on the murder.
Your description of the reader's emotional response to Lee's funeral--almost as if we're in attendance along with his family, which makes sense, since we've been with him for 400 pages now, and we know him better than any of them do--also suggests that it works as a counterpoint to Ruby's assurance that everyone wants Oswald dead and he'd be hailed as a hero. Whatever we make of the complicated picture of Lee's responsibility for this crime by the end, there's no feeling of satisfaction or justice to be had from seeing his body put in the ground. And if the conspirators believed that burying him would bury all suspicion, the novel suggests, through Margeurite raising all the issues that would be the basis for the conspiracy theories, that the opposite is true.
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