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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
Over the past few days, Binx has become more aware of Jewish people. He feels a certain vibration when he passes a Jewish person and isn’t sure why. Back in the days when he had friends, most of his friends were Jewish. He believes he is “Jewish by instinct,” since he shares the same sense of exile. In fact, he believes he accepts his exile more than a Jewish person accepts theirs.
Binx’s characterization of Jewish people reflects the thinking of the day’s majority culture, which sometimes described Jewish people in terms of a history of perpetual wandering and rejection by other peoples. Binx believes he can identify with this sense of “exile” even though he isn’t Jewish.
Themes
Binx believes that his thoughts about Jews are a real clue. A person who isn’t aware of the search, he believes, would never notice a Jewish person on the street. When a scientist or artist passes a Jewish person, he may pick up on something, but he probably assumes the person is just another object to be thought about or studied. But when a person who’s aware of the search passes a Jewish person, he is like “Robinson Crusoe” noticing a footprint on the beach.
The reference to Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe’s 18th-century adventure novel) hearkens back to Binx’s earlier language about being a castaway on a strange island. He thinks the Jewish “exile” experience is akin to his search and contains clues that only a seeker would pick up on.
Themes
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