When dreams collide: Rhetorical trajectories in the assassination of president Kennedy

Abstract

This essay offers yet another answer to the question raised in Kenneth Burke's “Lines Anent An Inquiry.” Dramatistic in method, the essay argues that Lee Harvey Oswald, while he acted alone, was not precisely a “loner” that he saw himself as the leader of a movement, imaginary though it was; that impelled by the rhetorical dynamics of that movement, he murdered in its name; and that the murder and the movement may serve as a paradigm of the form and fate of certain American movements that turned toward terrorism in the years after the assassination.