Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Moviegoer, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Value Systems
Women, Love, and Sex
Modern Life and the Search for Meaning
Loss, Suffering, and Death
Summary
Analysis
One Wednesday morning, Binx Bolling receives an invitation from his aunt to have lunch together. He knows this means she wants to discuss something serious, probably Binx’s future, or her stepdaughter Kate. Binx is reminded of his brother Scott’s death; Binx was eight at the time. As Binx walked behind the hospital with Aunt Emily, his neck prickled with anticipation. Finally, Aunt Emily told Binx that Scotty had died, and that now “it’s all up to you.” She tells Binx he’ll have to “act like a soldier.”
Two details about Binx are immediately evident. The first is his tendency to be reminded of stories from his past and to wander off on tangents about them, which often give insight into Binx’s present. The second, as shown by this particular tangent, is that his brother’s death has overshadowed Binx’s life. What’s more, Aunt Emily placed a heavy burden on Binx’s shoulders to act strong and to carry Scott’s potential as well as his own—an example of her duty-driven values.
Themes
This memory reminds Binx of going to see a movie with Linda last month at Lake Pontchartrain. The suburb where the theater is located has stopped growing, and the theater sits in the middle of an empty field. In the movie, a man had lost his memory and his connection to everything he knew, having to make a fresh start in a strange city. To Binx, this didn’t seem like a complete tragedy.
Though the connection between the moviegoing experience and Binx’s memory isn’t made completely clear, the movie’s plot—having to start over with a clean slate in an unfamiliar world—seems to remind him of his feelings after Scott’s death. A clean slate still appeals to him, suggesting that he's struggling with the meaning of his life.
Themes
After the movie, Binx had enjoyed chatting with the theater manager in the dark night, with the lake’s waves splashing over the seawall. Linda, however, was unhappy because Binx didn’t have a car in which to drive them home (he prefers buses and streetcars). She would rather have been taken out for dinner and dancing at a city hotel. At any rate, however, Binx and Linda are no longer dating—he has a new secretary, named Sharon Kincaid.
For Binx, storylines aren’t the only memorable thing about moviegoing—the place and the people around him are a significant part of the moviegoing experience. Modes of transportation serve a similar purpose. Later he’ll explain the significance of these things in his search for meaning. It’s hinted that Binx isn’t very romantically successful and that he dates his employees.
Themes
For the past few years, Binx has lived in a New Orleans suburb called Gentilly. It is not very distinctive-looking; most of its houses are built in a California or Florida style. Binx hasn’t minded this, however. He has tried living with his aunt and uncle in their beautiful house in the historic French Quarter, but somehow the environment alternately enrages and depresses him.
With its nondistinctive architecture, Gentilly feels like it could be anywhere—a bland suburb where people can quietly blend in. By contrast, the French Quarter is uniquely New Orleans, and this detail also reveals where the story is set. The uniqueness of the French Quarter unsettles Binx in ways he can’t yet explain—suggesting an uncertainty about what Binx wants from life.
Themes
Get the entire The Moviegoer LitChart as a printable PDF.
Gentilly, by contrast, is peaceful. There, Binx manages a branch of his uncle’s brokerage firm. He lives in a basement apartment belonging to Mrs. Schexnaydre, a widow. Binx takes pride in being a good tenant and citizen. He stores his important documents in a strongbox. He follows the advice he reads in Consumer Reports and carefully heeds public service announcements on the radio.
Binx prefers a stable, quiet, unvarying lifestyle that largely conforms to his neighbors’. He doesn’t have lofty ambitions in life and doesn’t question his ordinary and predictable environment or his society’s expectations of him. This attitude toward modern life will be directly challenged as the story develops.
Themes
One of Binx’s favorite evening activities is going to the movies. While other people treasure the memories of special events in their lives, Binx remembers key moments in movies. His secretary usually accompanies him to the movies. He has dated his last three secretaries—Marcia, Linda, and now Sharon. These relationships usually start off as love affairs, complete with romantic weekends on the Gulf Coast, but Marcia and Linda both broke up with him right when Binx believed they were truly happy. Marcia or Linda would grow more and more silent, and soon Binx and his girlfriend would be tired of each other.
It's not clear whether Binx lacks meaningful memories in his life or simply prefers not to dwell on what memories he has—either way, he has a pattern of marking significant moments through the movies he’s seen. He also has a pattern of dating his secretaries, seemingly with genuine feelings for them, but also with obliviousness to their feelings—suggesting Binx’s immaturity in relationships in general.
Themes
Binx’s job is selling stocks and bonds. Once, he had thought about going into law, medicine, or science, even achieving something great; but he now thinks it’s best to give up big dreams and live an ordinary life, perhaps getting married and having kids. For now, he lives on the main street of Gentilly, called Elysian Fields. Elysian Fields was supposed to be a grand boulevard, but it’s lined by shopping centers and ordinary homes. Next door to Mrs. Schexnaydre’s is a new school building. Binx enjoys strolling on the playground after work.
Binx’s livelihood focuses on the accumulation of wealth (his and his clients’). Though he once aspired to greater personal achievement, he appears to be satisfied, even complacent, about where he has landed in life—not too concerned about its meaning. Like Binx himself, his suburb has not lived up to its initial potential. His everyday life and his environment are marked by affluence, conformity, and complacence.
Themes
Suddenly, however, Binx’s quiet life in Gentilly has changed. This morning, for the first time in years, Binx woke up thinking about “a search.” He had dreamed of the war, which was the first time he thought of the search—it came to him while he was injured in a ditch. His shoulder was pressed to the ground, and he couldn’t get up. For Binx, his best times are also his worst times, and this particular “worst” was one of his very best. As he watched a dung beetle scratching in the dirt, Binx realized he was “onto something,” and he promised himself that if he ever got out of this ditch, he would pursue a search. But after the war, Binx forgot about his search.
Binx hasn’t always been this way. A veteran of the Korean conflict in the early 1950s, Binx has survived a traumatic experience that, at the time, made him believe that there’s something more to life than what’s apparent. This suggests a pattern in Binx’s life whereby the “worst” times—like personal suffering—open up possibilities for growth. However, when things return to normal, it’s easy to forget the insights gained during exceptional moments.
Themes
This morning, however, as Binx got dressed and filled his pockets with the usual things (like a notebook, pencil, and slide rule), it’s as if he saw these objects for the first time. At that moment, his search became possible. He thinks about the search again as he travels to his Aunt Emily’s house on the bus. (Binx doesn’t enjoy cars because he feels invisible in them.) He takes a route through the French Quarter because he read in the newspaper that William Holden is in town, shooting scenes for a movie.
The “search” is characterized by an awareness of possibilities beyond the ordinary—that’s why things like the contents of one’s pockets can cease to be mundane and start to look like clues. Even before remembering his search, Binx already seems to have had an instinctive resistance to conformity—finding that cars tend to isolate a person from humanity, for example. William Holden was a popular 1950s movie star, which orients the reader as to when the story is set.
Themes
It’s a gray, gloomy day in March. Binx sits on a bus that’s mostly crowded with women shoppers; five Black women sit together in the back. Next to Binx sits an especially beautiful woman who appears to be smiling flirtatiously at him. Binx imagines that if this were a movie, it would be so easy for them to meet. But then he gets distracted again by the idea of the search.
The novel doesn’t directly engage with racism, but it’s present in the background—for example, the acknowledgment of Jim Crow laws that consigned Black passengers to the rear of buses. As for romance, Binx tends to look for shortcuts to a meaningful relationship, preferring a simplistic movie plot to the challenges of real life.
Themes
The search is what anyone would pursue if they weren’t absorbed by the “everydayness” of life. This morning, Binx awoke feeling like a “castaway” on a strange island. Any castaway explores the environment carefully for clues. If someone becomes aware of the idea of a search, that person is “onto something.” But if someone fails to be “onto something,” then that person is inevitably “in despair.”
Binx, distracted on the bus, goes on a slight tangent to describe the nature of his “search.” It’s simply an awareness of meaning beyond the ordinary, and a determination to keep searching for that meaning—like a castaway desperate to discover how they got there and why. Someone who doesn’t even know they’re a castaway is “in despair” because they don’t even think it's necessary to look beyond their hopeless, stuck situation.
Themes
The movies are aware of the search, but they never get it right—they always end with despair. The main character always starts out as a castaway, but he ends up falling in love and settling down, eventually sinking into everydayness until “he might just as well be dead.”
Binx sees moviegoing as an element of his search—even though, in his opinion, movies never reach a satisfying conclusion. That’s because movie characters catch on to the search but inevitably settle for the ordinary, which Binx sees as selling out, a reflection of what the average moviegoer wants to see.
Themes
Binx isn’t sure about the object of his search. He’s heard, for example, that 98% of Americans believe in God. Have those people already found what Binx is seeking—or has the idea of a search never even occurred to them? Binx sincerely doesn’t know.
Binx doesn’t even know what he’s searching for. He doesn’t discount the possibility that his search is basically religious in nature; after all, most people are satisfied that God is the answer and build their lives around that belief. In Binx’s view, they might be right, or else they might be deluded, oblivious to the “search,” and therefore in despair.
Themes
Lost in thought, Binx has been staring at the beautiful passenger’s calf, sometimes frowning. Before she gets off the bus, Binx tries smiling at the woman, but he gets no response. A little later, he gets off the bus at the French Quarter and walks through neighborhoods of old ironwork and overgrown gardens. It turns out he’s having a lucky day—he spots William Holden. Binx follows, watching as a young couple gets between him and the movie star. Binx quickly surmises that the young couple are Northerners on their honeymoon. The couple looks unhappy. But when William Holden asks the young man for a match and then chats with him in a friendly way, the young man’s whole demeanor changes; Binx thinks the fellow now feels validated in his existence.
Ironically, Binx’s preoccupation with the search sometimes makes him oblivious to beauty around him. Binx’s observation of the young couple is another example of Binx’s habit of seeing the people around him as evidence in his search. He’s just making assumptions about the young couple and their interaction with the movie star—none of this is necessarily true—but the story he invents validates Binx’s ideas (i.e., that people tend to drift unhappily in anonymous, conformist lives until something jolts them out of their oblivion). This suggests that Binx’s assumptions about his search could be misguided, too.
Themes
It’s lunchtime, and a parade, put on by a women’s krewe, is going down the street. Binx thinks the current krewe includes Linda; he had promised to come and watch her in the parade. However, because of the women’s masks, he isn’t sure if she’s among them. Binx senses a despair in the atmosphere that he cannot explain.
Krewes are groups of people who organize to put on parades and balls during New Orleans’s famous Mardi Gras celebration. Binx’s inability to identify Linda suggests a tendency to view the women he dates as interchangeable.
Themes
Binx spends 10 minutes talking with a friend, Eddie Lovell, and then cannot remember what they discussed. As Binx listens to Eddie talk about his marriage and business and admires the man’s self-confident stance, he wonders if his own life in Gentilly is a joke and if Eddie is really living. A few years ago, Kate was engaged to Eddie’s brother Lyell. The night before their wedding, Lyell was killed in a car accident, which Kate survived. When Eddie asks how Kate is doing nowadays, Binx assures him that Kate seems well and happy.
Again, Binx is so preoccupied by the implications of an interaction (like if Eddie’s life is better than his) that he misses what’s in front of him. There is a self-absorption in his search for meaning that makes his narration of events questionable, if not outright unreliable. The conversation reveals Kate’s background, which, like Binx’s, includes loss and grief. Eddie implies that Kate hasn’t always handled her loss well.
Themes
