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 successfully achieves what he calls a “repetition.” One day, 14 years ago, Binx watched a Western called The Oxbow Incident at a campus movie house. He remembers the smell of privet shrubs outside. (Binx always notices the smell of a movie theater’s neighborhood and season.) Yesterday, he noticed that the same theater was running Picayune, another Western. He and Kate watch the movie and emerge from the theater to the same smell of privet. It’s a successful repetition.
Binx’s attention to specific details—such as the smell of hedges blossoming near the theater—lets him experience movies on a level beyond what most people experience. The moviegoing experience is something beyond just escaping into a film; it’s a way of looking for meaning beyond ordinary life.
Themes
A “repetition” is a reenactment of past experience, so that the time segment that’s elapsed can be isolated and savored apart from intervening events. For example, Binx recently experienced a repetition by accident when he spotted a newspaper advertisement which he previously spotted 20 years ago in a magazine. The repetition made him feel as if everything that had happened during the intervening 20 years never happened; only time itself remained. The movie theater repetition is not as satisfying. However, Binx thinks about the movie theater seats which have quietly endured for 14 years’ worth of silent nights. He feels that such enduring must somehow be accounted for.
For Binx, a “repetition” is an aspect of the search which attempts to grasp the mystery of time. It is sort of like déjà vu, except that its value is not simply in the repeat act itself, but in recognizing the passage of intervening time—like 14 years’ worth of nights that have gone (as far as he knows) unrecognized by anyone else. In this way, Binx seeks to understand the significance of specific time as well as specific place.
Themes
After the movie, Binx and Kate walk around campus and talk about Kate’s doctor’s appointment. She feels better after having talked with Merle Mink. But Kate worries that she puts on her best face with doctors. Being sick doesn’t bother her—being well does. She suddenly clutches Binx’s arm and says that it’s only in times of disaster or death that people seem “real.” But after such a moment passes, people once again drift into unreality.
In her own way, Kate is searching, too. She is trying to understand how to live life apart from suffering, given that the most significant moments of her life have involved death and loss. In the absence of suffering, people seem indistinct and unreal. Binx also struggles with the seeming unreality of the world in light of “everydayness.”
Themes
Binx and Kate stop by the laboratory where Binx once worked. Kate asks if this is part of Binx’s search, but Binx doesn’t answer. Kate sees the search as a form of eccentricity. Binx can’t stand to be a mere eccentric and is annoyed by Kate’s vaguely mocking tone. Kate muses that perhaps Binx is overlooking something obvious in his search, but she won’t tell him what. On the streetcar, she kisses him affectionately, her eyes darkened to discs.
Vehicles often feature prominently in the progression of Binx’s relationships—like this streetcar ride with Kate. Binx feels that Kate isn’t taking his search seriously, but in the midst of her anxiety (signaled by her darkened eyes), Kate has an insight that neither of them fully appreciates yet—hinting that she is a key to his search.
Themes
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