Moviegoer Essay, Research Paper

In Walker Percy?s story The Moviegoer, Binx Bolling, a Stockbroker on the

verge of turning thirty is on a quest. Set in 1960 New Orleans during Mardi Gras

Binx, an upper class southern gentleman sets out to find out about himself.

Answer questions that have tugged at his soul. Questions about despair,

everydayness, religion and romance. Binx is stuck in a quagmire. He must break

out from this cloak of ennui and find the essence of being. But how? How can

people, a person with a soul and a world at their fingertips be so inept at

finding what makes them alive. Can it be found in religion or on the arm of a

southern beauty? Maybe it can be found in the surrealism of a movie, or the

excitement of making money. What if an answer is found? Will it frighten a

person back to their everydayness? Some of these question are sound, others may

be just thoughts in the authors mind, but they are questions that Binx must find

out about. The following will talk about the idea of despair & everydayness

and if others think about searching the way Binx Bolling does. Binx is deathly

afraid of being pulled into everydayness. That is to say that he does not want

to fall into the trap of a daily, weekly of life long rut. He does not want to

settle for just living just an existence. He wants to be noticed, to have the

ability of excitement on a daily routine. To work hard and start a family and

fight for what he thinks is a grand life. Only to realize years later that such

a routine was established you never left from where you started. To Binx that is

death. Not physically dead, but soulfully dead. But what is so wrong with

everydayness. One could argue that everydayness could be a positive influence.

Millions of people for hundreds of years have lived a life of everydayness. Has

society stopped? Have people withered into tiny robots fueled by repetition?

People need repetition to keep them going. Everydayness gets us up in the

morning. It puts us in the game of life. It causes others to rely on one

another. If you are to change a habit, chaos can follow. The man who changes his

routine of being husband and father can cause such damage to his family and

others that it?s almost unthinkable. Maybe these people are the ones on to

something. And the people rooting about trying to avoid everydayness are the

ones that are lost. They are the ones stuck in everydayness, stuck in despair.

Binx tries with all his might to avoid the pit falls of everydayness and

despair. He finds comfort on the arm of various women and in the movies that he

frequents. Maybe he is on to something here. If you change the company you are

with on a regular basis, you can avoid the everydayness that has taken the life

of others around him. Different smiles that are all the same, backsides that

melt together: Marcia, Linda and now Sharon. Talk about repetition. That?s a

living hell and then to justify it all through a movie. To believe that a

celluloid hero can mimic real life is just unreal. Happiness can be written into

the script. Everydayness is an overlooked flash in the background. The director

yells cut if things go amiss. Ideals can be manipulated to fit the screen. Binx

puts more effort into avoiding everydayness than it takes to live with it He is

avoiding something that so many of us long to have. Is Binx that far into his

own despair that he is missing the whole idea of finding everydayness? Many

people search for that perfect person just to spend a lifetime of everydayness

with. Binx lives through the movies he sees. He finds a realness there, a

realness that is lacking in real life. He talks about certification. With that

he feels that the places where we live and visit are not real unless those

locations are depicted in the movies. It?s not just movies where he finds this

certification. For example when both he and Kate travel to Chicago. Binx talks

about the genie-soul he goes on: ?Not a single thing do I remember from the

first trip (referring to a trip his dad took him, and his brother when they were

young boys) but this: the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of

this place which every place has or else is not a place (202) The genie-soul is

nothing more than an apparition, but if there is to be realness about a place,

any place there has to be more to it than those that inhabit it. Because,

don?t forget, Binx can?t be stuck in the everydayness of ordinary life. So

while in Chicago, Binx and Kate visit an old army buddy–Harold Graebner. Now to

Binx Harold is the only soul know to him in the entire Midwest. This is because

he saved Binx?s life during the war (206). But the town where he lives does

not have a genie-soul; it can?t be certified. It?s not a place at all, to

Binx or Kate. It?s this type of certification that leads us to the end of the

book. The final scene where he (Binx) sends Kate downtown to get some government

papers. She is nervous about going, but Binx puts her mind at ease. He picks a

cape jasmine and hands it to her: Kate: While I am on the streetcar?are you

going to be thinking about me? ?I?m going to sit next to the window on the

Lake side and put the cape jasmine in my lap?? Binx: yes. Kate: And you will

be thinking of me just that way? Binx: That?s right. It?s at this point that

Binx and Kate have found what they were looking for. Certification.

Certification that a moment in both their lives, marked by the simple gesture of

a flower and a common thought makes everything real now; not just the image of

things being real. They have each other, not despair and everydayness.