Loss, Suffering, and Death Theme Analysis

Many characters in The Moviegoer experience tragedy firsthand and spend their lives trying to come to terms with it. Binx’s step-cousin, Kate, survives a car accident that kills her fiancé and spares her from a marriage she didn’t want, but also plunges her into an ongoing struggle with anxiety and depression. Binx, meanwhile, loses his older brother in childhood and narrowly escapes death himself in the Korean conflict, struggling through each of these tragedies to mature in his attitude toward life. Finally, Binx’s 14-year-old half-brother, Lonnie, struggles with disability and illness throughout his short life—yet his steadfast desire for death (to be with God) shapes his life and brings him eventual peace. By exploring characters’ various interactions with suffering and death, Percy argues that while each person comes to terms with suffering in their own way, accepting death—even embracing death as the gateway to God—is the only thing that finally yields meaning and ultimate peace.

The trauma of her fiancé Lyell’s death releases Kate from a life she doesn’t want—but afterward, she feels stuck, unable to settle on a meaningful course in life. Kate slipped away from the accident scene and boarded a bus, describing the journey as idyllic: "I got on and we went sailing along [in] bright sunshine[.]" She then pampered herself in a hotel before going home. Kate’s experience following Lyell’s death sounds like a personal resurrection: she escapes an unwanted life and savors her free existence, as if for the first time.

However, Kate feels traumatized as the shock of the accident wears off; she keeps trying to relive her liberating experience but never fully succeeds. Kate describes a typical therapy appointment this way: “One minute I am straining every nerve to be the sort of person I was expected to be […] and the next minute to know with the calmest certitude that even if I could succeed […] that I had something better. I was free.” Kate’s experience of realization, calm, and freedom from expectation briefly recaptures her feeling of liberation after Lyell’s death—but it doesn’t permanently free her from the aftereffects of trauma. This suggests that until Kate fully confronts her grief—and her own  near brush with death—she cannot fully enjoy her freedom.

Encounters with death similarly haunt Binx throughout the novel, and he doesn’t face these encounters head-on. Because he tries to ignore the painful reality of death, he is haunted later in life by unresolved questions.  One of Binx’s most powerful childhood memories involves his older brother Scott’s death when Binx was 8. When Aunt Emily broke the news, she told Binx, “Now it’s all up to you. It’s going to be difficult for you but I know you’re going to act like a soldier.” Binx seems to take Emily’s words at face value, “acting” according to what is expected of him rather than facing the pain he feels. Essentially, Scott’s death leads to Binx living a superficial life.

Binx’s own brush with death spurs him to reconsider this superficial life. After going through most of life fulfilling a role, Binx survives a war wound and then begins his “search” for what’s really meaningful. This search is characterized by Binx’s overall attitude of watchfulness, starting with an inability to sleep soundly after the war. He often jolts awake in the middle of the night and lies awake pondering, or wanders the streets seeking, clues to his “search,” “wakeful and watchful as a sentry.” Binx doesn’t identify the specific cause of his wakefulness—just that it’s a result of getting shot—or the precise goal of his search, only that his injury awakened him to its importance. Like Kate, Binx seems to be stuck in the aftermath of a traumatic experience, unable to move on because he hasn’t fully faced the fear of the event and the fact that he so nearly died.

Binx’s half-brother Lonnie, who’s disabled and often ill, genuinely embraces suffering and death. As a result, he is the only character who appears to find peace with the reality of death. Lonnie envies his deceased older brother, Duval, because Duval is dead: he “sees God face to face,” while Lonnie can’t. Lonnie explains to Binx that he is fasting during Lent in order to conquer the sin of envy. When Binx suggests that Lonnie focus instead on devotion to the Eucharist, because fasting would weaken him, Lonnie points out that “Eucharist is a sacrament of the living,” suggesting that his deeper desire is to die and be with God.

Later, Lonnie seems to find true peace in dying. When he dies of hepatitis just after his 15th birthday, he whispers to Binx on his deathbed that he has finally achieved his desire to conquer the sin of envy. Lonnie implies that his religious devotions, like fasting, have achieved their goal of helping him conquer envy. The novel implies that, in the process, Lonnie’s excessive practices have finally weakened him to the point of fatal illness. Yet Lonnie accepts his death; in fact, ironically, he’s now being rewarded with what he’d envied in the first place—the chance to die and be with God. This suggests that Lonnie, though he suffers the most physically and actually dies, enjoys greater peace in his short life than either Kate or Binx. Unlike Lonnie, Kate and Binx dodge death, yet they suffer mentally and emotionally because of their failure to fully accept the pain of grief and the inevitability of their own deaths.

The novel begins and ends with Binx’s confrontations with death. Whereas his childhood experience of Scott’s death forced him to behave as if death weren’t real and could be ignored (simply “act like a soldier”), Binx now greets Lonnie’s death with acceptance, even able to comfort Lonnie’s younger siblings and reassure them that now, Lonnie is free from suffering. This suggests that Lonnie’s death helps Binx move further along in his own understanding of life, bringing him closer to peace himself.