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Binx Bolling (John “Jack” Bickerson Bolling)
Emily is Binx’s formidable, wealthy great-aunt, who is 65. After Binx’s father’s death, she oversaw Binx’s upbringing and education. In her youth, Emily was a rebel, entering social work and serving overseas with the Red Cross. She is an Episcopalian by heritage and temperament, but she considers herself to be a “Buddhist by choice.” Aunt Emily is Jules Cutrer’s wife and Kate’s stepmother. Aunt Emily tends to put people into neat categories (heroic or cowardly), and she sees the world simply—people must do their duty no matter the circumstances (for example, when Binx was a child grieving over his brother’s death, she told him that he must “act like a soldier”). Nowadays, she is frustrated by a modern world, which appears to be settling for mediocrity instead of culture and noble sentiments, and she thinks Binx is wasting his abilities. Emily has a contentious relationship with Kate but worries constantly about her stepdaughter’s mental health and tries to provide the best care for her. At the end of the book, she angrily lectures Binx for absconding to Chicago with Kate, but later, Binx’s willingness to marry Kate and begin the medical career that she’s long envisioned for him appears to restore her faith in him.
Aunt Emily Cutrer Quotes in The Moviegoer
The The Moviegoer quotes below are all either spoken by Aunt Emily Cutrer or refer to Aunt Emily Cutrer. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1, Section 5
Quotes
All the stray bits and pieces of the past, all that is feckless and gray about people, she pulls together into an unmistakable visage of the heroic or the craven, the noble or the ignoble. So strong is she that sometimes the person and the past are in fact transfigured by her. They become what she sees them to be.
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"I no longer pretend to understand the world." She is shaking her head yet still smiling her sweet menacing smile. "The world I knew has come crashing down around my ears.” […] For her too the fabric is dissolving, but for her even the dissolving makes sense. She understands the chaos to come. It seems so plain when I see it through her eyes. My duty in life is simple. I go to medical school. I live a long useful life serving my fellowman. What's wrong with this? All I have to do is remember it.
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Chapter 5, Section 1
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"Would you verify my hypothesis? […] First, is it not true that in all of past history people who found themselves in difficult situations behaved in certain familiar ways, well or badly, courageously or cowardly, with distinction or mediocrity, with honor or dishonor. They are recognizable. […] Such anyhow has been the funded experience of the race for two or three thousand years, has it not? Your discovery, as best as I can determine, is that there is an alternative which no one has hit upon. It is that one finding oneself in one of life's critical situations need not after all respond in one of the traditional ways. […] Do as one pleases, shrug, turn on one's heel and leave. Exit. Why after all need one act humanly?
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"I did my best for you, son. I gave you all I had. More than anything I wanted to pass on to you the one heritage of the men of our family, a certain quality of spirit, a gaiety, a sense of duty, a nobility worn lightly, a sweetness, a gentleness with women—the only good things the South ever had and the only things that really matter in this life. Ah well.”
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"What has been going on in your mind during all the years when we listened to music together, read the Crito, and spoke together—or was it only I who spoke—good Lord, I can't remember—of goodness and truth and beauty and nobility?" […] Don't you love these things? Don't you live by them?"
"No."
"What do you love? What do you live by?"
I am silent.
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Get the entire The Moviegoer LitChart as a printable PDF.
Aunt Emily Cutrer Quotes in The Moviegoer
The The Moviegoer quotes below are all either spoken by Aunt Emily Cutrer or refer to Aunt Emily Cutrer. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1, Section 5
Quotes
All the stray bits and pieces of the past, all that is feckless and gray about people, she pulls together into an unmistakable visage of the heroic or the craven, the noble or the ignoble. So strong is she that sometimes the person and the past are in fact transfigured by her. They become what she sees them to be.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
"I no longer pretend to understand the world." She is shaking her head yet still smiling her sweet menacing smile. "The world I knew has come crashing down around my ears.” […] For her too the fabric is dissolving, but for her even the dissolving makes sense. She understands the chaos to come. It seems so plain when I see it through her eyes. My duty in life is simple. I go to medical school. I live a long useful life serving my fellowman. What's wrong with this? All I have to do is remember it.
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Chapter 5, Section 1
Quotes
"Would you verify my hypothesis? […] First, is it not true that in all of past history people who found themselves in difficult situations behaved in certain familiar ways, well or badly, courageously or cowardly, with distinction or mediocrity, with honor or dishonor. They are recognizable. […] Such anyhow has been the funded experience of the race for two or three thousand years, has it not? Your discovery, as best as I can determine, is that there is an alternative which no one has hit upon. It is that one finding oneself in one of life's critical situations need not after all respond in one of the traditional ways. […] Do as one pleases, shrug, turn on one's heel and leave. Exit. Why after all need one act humanly?
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"I did my best for you, son. I gave you all I had. More than anything I wanted to pass on to you the one heritage of the men of our family, a certain quality of spirit, a gaiety, a sense of duty, a nobility worn lightly, a sweetness, a gentleness with women—the only good things the South ever had and the only things that really matter in this life. Ah well.”
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"What has been going on in your mind during all the years when we listened to music together, read the Crito, and spoke together—or was it only I who spoke—good Lord, I can't remember—of goodness and truth and beauty and nobility?" […] Don't you love these things? Don't you live by them?"
"No."
"What do you love? What do you live by?"
I am silent.
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