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On Sept. 27, Oswald went to Mexico City himself, headed straight for the Cuban embassy. He tried to get a visa to Cuba but flopped miserably. He was in Mexico seven days, and Commission investigators have traced enough of his activities there to be persuaded that he made no conspiratorial contacts about killing Kennedy at the time.
"Not a Man." Back in the U.S. with Marina, Oswald once more suffered frustrations. "The relations between Lee and Marina Oswald," says the Warren Commission, "are of great importance in any attempt to understand Oswald's possible motivation." Oswald was a wife-beating tyrant, laid down orders that Marina must not smoke, drink or wear cosmetics. But, says the Commission, "although she denied it in some of her testimony before the Commission, it appears that Marina Oswald also complained that her husband was not able to provide more material things for her." Neighbors also recall that Marina complained to them in his presence about Oswald's sexual inadequacies, that she had said he was "not a man."
On Nov. 18, Marina and Lee Oswald quarreled bitterly over the telephone. Marina was staying with Mrs. Ruth Paine, Oswald had been living in a Dallas boarding house. But now Marina discovered that he was there under a phony name. She furiously scolded him. Still, said Marina to the Warren Commission, "he called several times, but after I hung up on him and didn't want to talk to him, he did not call again."
"Perpetually Discontented." Surprisingly, Oswald arrived at the Paine home on the evening of Thursday, Nov. 21. Marina told the Commission: "He tried to talk to me, but I would not answer him and he was very upset." Oswald left the house for nearly an hour—during which time he was presumably out in the garage, disassembling his rifle and placing it in the brown paper bag he had brought with him to carry "curtain rods" back to his boardinghouse. Next morning he left for his job in Dallas, the "curtain rod" bag in hand.
Concludes the Warren Commission: "Many factors were undoubtedly involved in Oswald's motivation for the assassination, and the Commission, does not believe that it can ascribe to him any one motive or group of motives. It is apparent, however, that Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. Oswald's search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start. He sought for himself a place in history—a role as the 'great man' who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation. He also had demonstrated [through the attempt to kill General Walker] a capacity to act decisively and without regard to the consequences when such action would further his aims of the moment. Out of these and the many other factors which may have molded the character of Lee Harvey Oswald there emerged a man capable of