George de Mohrenschildt

Of all of the characters in the book, the strange and interesting ones seem to be the people that DeLillo isn't making up. So I thought I would do a little research on George de Mohrenschildt who seemed to be the most interesting of all of the real characters. As DeLillo describes him he is an international man of intrigue like Lawrence Parmenter but is real. As DeLillo writes George de Mohrenschildt was
A charming and worldly man able to converse fluently in Russian, English, French, Spanish, probably Togo as well, or whatever they spoke in Togoland.  Larry liked the man. He’d known him for some years and was aware that George had been debriefed by the Agency after several trips abroad. But even though their business interests had overlapped once or twice, he wasn’t sure quite what George’s racket was.
This leaves this air of mystery around him because we don't actually find out what he really does for a living. DelLillo also writes,
But his marriages didn’t explain his apparent association with Nazis in World War II, his apparent ties to Polish and French intelligence, his expulsion from Mexico, his apparent communist leanings when he was at the University of Texas, his Soviet contacts in Venezuela, the discrepancies in his stated history, his travels in West Africa, Central America, Yugoslavia and Cuba.
While I was reading this I wondered how much was true, so I did some research. I found that there were in fact rumors that he had ties to foreign intelligence and that he admitted he had ties to French intelligence. I also found that he was born in Mozyr, Russia and was part of the Dallas Russian community that had shunned Lee because of his background. I also found that there were, in fact, allegations of Nazi activity on his part. Crazily enough he also did get kicked out of Mexico. According to him it was might have been because General Maxino Camacho of the Mexican Army, was jealous of his relationship with Lilia Larin, a Mexican citizen he met and fell in love with.
I found various other things that match with DeLillo's short summary of what he has done and I must say I was expecting at least some of it to be made up.

Playing a Character?

In Kindred, Dana has talked about how she and Kevin are just playing characters and aren't actually a part of what is going on many times. In class, we also talked about how she is pretending to be someone she isn't and that she understands that. An example of this is when Dana says, "we humored the people around us by pretending to be like them. But we were poor actors. We never really got into our roles.We never forgot that we were acting" (Butler 98).  This shows that while they are playing characters they are still separate from their characters. This becomes apparent in this scene that followed when Dana talks to Kevin about what is wrong with the game the children are playing and even says that she breaks character herself. But at the same time, the understanding that she is playing a character enough to separate her from her character. This is true both mentally and physically. Take, for example, the scene where Tom Weylin sees Dana leaving Kevin's room in the morning. Even though Dana knows that there is nothing shameful about what happened in her time, Weylin is able to make her feel ashamed because of the character she is playing. But on the other hand, Dana is still susceptible to physical threats and pain because even though she is acting, the consequences are all too real. This becomes apparent at the start when the patroller tries to rape her and continues through the book. These difference to Dana just being an actor made me think of a book I read several years ago. It was about a detective who went undercover as a girl who had been murdered (because she looked very similar) to try to find out who murdered the girl. During the book, the detective knew she was playing a role but was still in danger. I think that that is a better analogy to Dana's situation. She isn't an actor as much as she is an undercover detective.