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Chapter 2, Section 4
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 is awakened by the noise of the mailman, who brings a letter from Binx’s old war buddy Harold Graebner. It’s a birth announcement, and Harold asks Binx to be his new baby’s godfather. Binx seldom sends or receives letters. When he was in the army, he initially wrote Aunt Emily long, thoughtful letters about his experiences. Binx now scorns the romanticism of his old letters, thinking it no better than his father’s pointless health obsession. He wonders how to reply to Harold. He begins to write that since he’s not a practicing Catholic, he doesn’t believe he could be a godfather. But he ends up destroying his reply.
Harold’s letter makes him sound like someone who has figured out where he belongs in life—a family man with definite beliefs, in contrast to Binx, who is alone and adrift. This contrast makes Binx think cynically of his idealistic younger self and his father’s attempts to improve his health—neither of which did them any good, he thinks. In the midst of his search, Binx feels unable to relate honestly to someone as self-assured as Harold.
Themes
