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Chapter 5, Section 1
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
It’s a windy, gloomy day in Gentilly. It’s also Binx’s 30th birthday. He sits on the school playground waiting for Kate. He feels he knows less than he’s ever known before. The present could be described as “the great shithouse of […] humanism” in which all needs are satisfied, “everyone becomes an anyone,” and malaise is everywhere. He figures there is nothing left for him to do but to satisfy his desires. His search has been abandoned.
It's a significant day for Binx. He feels like a failure in his search. He knows what’s wrong with the world—people have everything they want, their identities are flattened into anonymity, and therefore there’s an underlying despair pervading everything. But he has no hope of discovering a solution anymore and figures he might as well give in to the prevailing culture.
Themes
Whenever he leaves one of his serious talks with his aunt, Binx always feels the need to find a woman. He’s been waiting for Kate for almost an hour and growing anxious. He decides to call Sharon, figuring that Kate knows Aunt Emily is right and has given up on him. Sharon isn’t home—she’s out with her fiancé—but her roommate, Joyce, is. From the phone booth, Binx watches some children spinning crazily on the school’s merry-go-round as Joyce invites him to a party and he accepts.
Binx’s impulse confirms that he tends to look to random women to fulfill his sense of inadequacy when he disappoints women he actually respects. Either Sharon or Joyce would serve this purpose—it doesn’t matter to Binx. He feels his life is unraveling meaninglessly like children on a merry-go-round.
Themes
Binx notices Kate’s car pulling into the bus shelter across the street, and he wonders if it’s not too late after all. He asks Joyce if he can bring his fiancée, Kate, along to the party to introduce her to Joyce and Sharon. Joyce sounds relieved.
However, Kate breaks Binx’s pattern with women. When he sees her arrive, he immediately senses that their plans on the train will go forward after all, showing how well he knows Kate deep down.
Themes
The playground is now deserted, but every once in a while, small groups of people enter the church next door. It suddenly dawns on Binx that it’s Ash Wednesday. He and Kate sit in her car. Kate thinks Binx is an idiot for not telling Aunt Emily about their plans to get married. She told Aunt Emily herself, and now Emily wants to see Binx again. Binx needs to see her anyway—he needs to tell her his decision about medical school. He’s realized that there’s only one thing for him to do: listen to people, try to understand their ways, and help them along as best he can (and vice versa). It’s just a matter of how this vocation is best pursued.
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent for Catholics. It’s a season of repentance, or reorienting oneself spiritually. This suggests a clear break in Binx’s direction in life, too—marriage being the opposite of his drifting, uncommitted past. Binx realizes that some of the fundamentals of his search—especially listening to people and trying to understand the world—can be faithfully pursued in many different contexts instead of monopolizing his life.
Themes
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Binx tells Kate that he’s willing to go to medical school if Emily wants him to, and that he’s still prepared to marry Kate. Then Kate says that they must understand each other. She doesn’t know if she will be successful, and she is afraid, but not just of marriage—of simple things like drugstore errands. The only time she isn’t scared is when she’s with Binx. She’ll need him to be with her all the time, and there’s no guarantee that she’ll change.
Kate’s and Binx’s marriage will be unconventional. Kate can’t promise that she’ll be a good partner, and she’ll need a lot of help. It’s different, in other words, both from Binx’s past flings and even from a more romantic ideal of marriage. But it’s based on honest knowledge of each other, something that more conventional models might lack.
Themes
Nevertheless, Kate thinks she sees a way forward. If Binx will tell her simple things to do, without laughing at her, then Kate will believe in him. Binx promises to do this and kisses Kate’s bleeding hand where she has been relentlessly plucking at her skin. She promises to try not to hurt herself so much.
In keeping with the unconventional tone of their relationship, Binx accepts Kate’s proposal. His dedication to helping Kate this way shows that Aunt Emily’s belief in his selfishness was misplaced.
Themes
Binx watches as a man emerges from the Ash Wednesday service, ashes visible on his forehead, and sits in his car for a minute. Binx wonders why the man is here. Is it simply part of the business of life? Or does the man really believe that God is present right here in this church? Could it be both—coming for worldly reasons and finding God’s grace anyway? Binx decides it’s impossible to say.
Binx’s questions about the man sum up the substance of his search and indicate how far he’s come. He recognizes that the man’s actions can reflect both “everydayness” and a belief in the transcendent. In fact, perhaps the nature of God’s grace is that it’s present in the midst of the everyday. Binx can’t say this for sure, but he’s open to the possibility.
Themes
