The Moviegoer: Chapter 4, Section 2 Summary & Analysis

Three hours later, Binx and Kate are on a train. As he boards the train, Binx experiences a “repetition,” remembering his last train ride 10 years ago, between San Francisco and New Orleans. He notices that trains have changed since then; nowadays, everyone is crammed into small, isolated roomettes. Kate, seemingly affected by the train ride, is playful and flirtatious, grabbing Binx and talking about moving to California. Binx feels uneasy about her bravado.

While sitting in the observation car, Binx and Kate encounter Binx’s friend Sidney Gross and his wife, Margot, headed to the same convention. Sidney briefly chats with Binx before moving aside for a card game. Meanwhile, Kate, upset by the prospect of small talk, has been searching through her purse and is upset to learn that Sam has confiscated her pills. She goes to the bathroom and scrubs the makeup off her face. She and Binx quietly watch the swamp speed by. Binx watches the man next to him, bound for St. Louis, reading a newspaper. Binx drifts in and out of dreams based on tidbits from the paper. He senses “thousands of tiny thing-events” bombarding the train as it rushes through the world. Kate, meanwhile, longs to be “an anyone who is anywhere” and trembles because she can’t.

Binx dazedly admires his neighbor’s orderly clipping of newspaper articles and reflects that the search has disordered his own, once-orderly life; he no longer eats or sleeps or writes observations in his notebook. Meanwhile, Kate, overwhelmed, retreats to their roomette. Binx joins her after a little while. Kate tells him that though he is less sympathetic than her mother or Merle, she nevertheless finds him comforting, because he is “nuttier” than she is. She wonders if that’s “sufficient ground for marriage,” and Binx figures it is better than love.

Kate admits to Binx that Sam also proposed to her. He’s lonely and likes Kate, but he also knows that someday she’ll be rich. Kate doesn’t mind because schemers are human. But Binx is different. She tells Binx that she knows the only way he could marry her is as an aspect of his “search.” She doesn’t want to get married for a prank; it’s better to just be honest about her loss of hope. She isn’t up to the façade of a conventional marriage, either. She also tells him that she has no intention of committing suicide, contrary to what everyone thinks. She disappears for a while.

The train stops in Baton Rouge, and Binx and Kate overlook the Capitol from the train. Kate feels rapt with its beauty, but Binx thinks the pursuit of beauty is a gateway to malaise and despair. But Kate is moved, and she suddenly discovers how it is possible for her to live in a city. She says she now knows what she is: a religious person. She means that she wants to believe in someone completely and do whatever that person tells her to do.

Kate asks Binx if he will tell her what to do. He is unreligious and self-centered, so she believes he could do this. She doesn’t know whether she loves Binx, but she believes in him and will do what he says. He agrees to do this for her, and she passionately kisses him. Shortly thereafter, however, her mood collapses. They curl up in Binx’s roomette, but Kate feels ambivalent about Binx’s embrace. She’d spoken to Merle about her desire to have a fling, but now that she has the chance, she feels too scared. Binx, too, feels overcome by malaise, so he can’t go through with it. He feels that doing something illicit with Kate would almost have been preferable than refraining, because it would have broken him out of the malaise. Kate falls asleep.