The Moviegoer (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Walker Percy
- First Published: 1961
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The early 1960’s
- Setting: Primarily suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: 1960’s, Self-discovery, South or Southerners, Alienation, Spiritual life or spirituality, New Orleans, Films, movies, or motion pictures, Life, philosophy of
- Locales: New Orleans, LA
Characters Discussed
John Bickerson “Binx” Bolling, a twenty-nine-year-old class-bound Southerner given to the arts, culture, and education. Binx’s approach to his thirtieth birthday provokes an archetypal quest for meaning in his life. He is skeptical and existential, with a detachment from self that is metaphorically expressed: He sees himself and life itself as comparable to film figures and motion pictures. Moviegoing is a way to study life; more explicitly, life is a kind of existence in a movie: The replication has become the reality. The novel has very little...
[The entire page is 724 words long]
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