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Chapter 1, Section 3
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
Fulfilling his promise to Aunt Emily, Binx looks for Kate. He finds her cleaning an old fireplace in the basement, seeming more cheerful. Kate tells Binx that he doesn’t fool her—Aunt Emily thinks he’s a “go-getter” like the Bollings, but she knows he’s more like her. Kate takes the opportunity to criticize Aunt Emily, and Binx doesn’t object; Kate’s affections often swing between her father and stepmother. When Jules married Emily, Emily became a kind of older sister to Kate, opening up the world of art and ideas, and even tolerating Kate’s radical politics. But these days Kate seems to have surpassed Aunt Emily and has begun to resent her.
Kate understands Binx better than anyone else in his life, and this seems to be because Kate feels out of place in the family, too. While Emily opened up new possibilities to the younger Kate, she now sees what she wants to see in Kate, much as she does with Binx. Neither Kate nor Binx upholds the same values or is satisfied with the same kind of life as the rest of the family.
Themes
