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
That night, Binx finds it hard to stop thinking of Sharon. When a thunderstorm hits, breaking through his malaise, Binx is able to relax and watch television, a Western. He then listens to a radio program called “This I Believe,” in which intellectuals share their personal credos. Binx admires the guests’ invariable niceness and broad-mindedness. He listens to a playwright’s declaration of his belief in tolerance, understanding, and individual dignity. Binx also notices that everyone on the program professes more or less the same ideas. They also seem to like humanity in general, while hating particular individuals.
Binx finds the radio guests’ value systems to be essentially hypocritical. They claim to have kind, openminded, and even praiseworthy beliefs in the abstract, while showing less tolerance in specific scenarios. This suggests that their value systems aren’t actually worth much. What’s more, the radio program is basically an expression of conformity—it’s an opportunity for people to broadcast their open-mindedness without actually having to think for themselves.
Themes
Binx once tried submitting a tape to “This I Believe.” He concluded his tape, “I believe in a good kick in the ass.” He was relieved when the tape was returned without being aired. Tonight, the playwright concludes that he believes “in believing.” Binx turns off the radio program and goes to sleep thinking of Sharon.
Binx’s tape doesn’t conform to the usual expressions on “This I Believe,” to say the least, but in a way, it shows more substance than a claim to “believe in believing.” This statement suggests that, unlike Binx’s search, “This I Believe” isn’t an authentic search for truth after all.
Themes
