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
Binx and Kate got married in June. Sharon got married, too, and took over Binx’s office so that he could start medical school. Binx got his money from Mr. Sartalamaccia, and Kate moved into a house near Aunt Emily’s, one of the little houses renovated by Nell Lovell. Aunt Emily, meanwhile, has accepted Binx’s lack of heroism and begun liking him for his ordinariness. Both she and Kate laugh a lot at Binx’s expense.
Over the coming year, the main characters’ lives find new directions. Kate finally frees herself from her family’s expectations. Like Kate, Binx is also liberated from his aunt’s expectations now—she sees him for who he is rather than for who she’d like him to be, which gives them a basis for a better relationship.
Themes
The following Mardi Gras, Uncle Jules died of a heart attack. That May, just after turning 15, Lonnie Smith died of a viral infection. As for Binx’s search, he has little to say on the matter. As the “great Danish philosopher” said, he doesn’t have the authority to say much that’s worth saying. Anyway, he takes after his mother’s family in that he doesn’t like to speak about religion.
Binx’s attitude toward his search has changed, suggesting that his search deals with matters too big and serious to be grasped by an individual—and also implying that, whether or not he’s become an observant Catholic, he now sees his search as fundamentally religious in nature. (The “Danish philosopher” he refers to is the Christian existentialist Soren Kierkegaard, who influenced Percy’s writing.)
Themes
The day before Lonnie died, Kate went to visit him in the hospital. Binx had his doubts about this idea, and indeed, Kate is distraught by Lonnie’s wasted, yellowed condition. Binx tells her what Lonnie had whispered to him—that he had “conquered a habitual disposition,” and also that Kate was pretty. Binx kisses Kate and admires her; she has gained weight over the past year. However, she still plucks anxiously at her thumb, preoccupied with her grief.
Kate, as she had predicted, is still in the ongoing process of healing—her old wound-picking habit persists. But her willingness to face suffering and death more squarely than before suggests positive progress in her life. Meanwhile, Lonnie has overcome his habit of envy. The implication is that his religious observances have continued to weaken him, hastening a death he desires and accepts.
Themes
Binx looks for Lonnie’s siblings, who are sitting in the family car. Thérèse asks if her brother is going to die, and Binx says yes, but that Lonnie doesn’t want them to be sad. Binx sits with the children and answers their solemn questions, comforting them as he can. One of the children, Donice, wants to know if Lonnie will still have a wheelchair at the Resurrection. Binx says that Lonnie will be like the other children then. The little kids cheer, and Binx laughs with them. He offers to take them to the park.
The scene outside the hospital brings the novel full circle. When Binx was a little boy, Aunt Emily told him of Scott’s death and exhorted him to be a “soldier.” Now Binx breaks the news of Lonnie’s impending death but lets his siblings grieve, even reassuring them that Lonnie will one day be made whole and well again. This indicates Binx’s growth in facing death, as well as suggesting his growing openness to religion.
Themes
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Kate admires Binx’s sweetness with the children. Binx asks her if she will do him a favor. Since he has to stay with Lonnie and the children, will Kate take care of some business for him? Some of Aunt Emily’s documents need to be picked up from Uncle Jules’s old office downtown. Kate is nervous—she doesn’t know how to get there or what to ask for. Binx tells her he’ll make the arrangements—she won’t even have to say a word when she gets to the office—and he tells her where to catch the streetcar.
Binx doesn’t avoid Lonnie’s death but is willing to stay near him at the end of his life, suggesting that he’s grown closer to accepting death’s reality. Kate, likewise, has grown in her willingness to face the things that scare her, even though everyday errands remain difficult for her. But Binx fulfills his promise of helping Kate face such things once step at a time.
Themes
Kate stares uneasily at a cape jasmine blossom along the fence, and Binx picks it and hands it to her. Kate asks him questions about the errand—will he think of her sitting on the streetcar with the flower in her lap? Binx promises. He watches Kate walk toward the streetcar, holding the cape jasmine against her face, until he hears his siblings calling out behind him.
Kate’s brave streetcar journey, in contrast to the bus and train journeys by which she once fled tragedy in her life, show how much she is healing. Binx’s patient attention to her needs, characterized by the sweet gesture of the flower, also show that Binx now finds meaning within the everyday details of life, especially in helping those he loves. Binx is now firmly rooted where he belongs—fulfilling his loving obligations toward his wife and family.
Themes
