Walter Percy’s The Moviegoer is the fascinating depiction of a bizarre bird, Binx Bollings, a New Orleans’s stockbroker, who is driven by a search. There are two kinds of searches Binx is concerned with, a vertical search and horizontal search. Through them, Binx strives to transcend “everydayness,” as well as existential despair, hopelessness, and malaise. He fears being content in life because he does not want to loose his individuality and become invisibly dead—a fear he eventually accepts. In this paper, I shall argue that Binx Bollings abandons the vertical search because the vertical search is his descent in hell, similar to Dante’s Inferno, and once he reaches his circle of Hell, he is stuck in an eternal horizontal existence—unlike his step-brother, Lonnie, who truly transcends everydayness, and ascends in the vertical search due to grace.
The search is first mentioned as a type of curiosity. As Binx recalls,
I remembered the first time the search occurred to me. I came to myself under a chindolea bush. Everything is upside-down for me, as I shall explain later. What are generally considered to be the best times are for me the worst times, and that worst of times was one of the best. My shoulder didn’t hurt but it was pressed hard against the ground as if somebody sat on me. Six inches from my nose a dung beetle was scratching around under the leaves. As I watched, there awoke in me an immense curiosity. I was onto something. I vowed that if I ever got out of this fix, I would pursue the search.
Binx recognizes the possibility of another type of search, the horizontal search, which consumes most of his actions. While the vertical search is scientific, materialistic, mathematical, disinterested, objective, universal, ...
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...usiness of coming up in the world? Or is it because he believes that God himself is present here at the corner of Elysian Fields and Bons Enfants? Or is he here for both reasons: through some dim dazzling trick of grace, coming for the one and receiving the other as God’s own importunate bonus? It is impossible to say.
Finally, when Lonnie, Binx’s stepbrother, who is a devout Catholic, dies, he says, “I have conquered the habitual disposition.” Lonnie conquered the habitual disposition of hopeless everydayness, of living a life in the static, dead existence of sin, by living in the grace of God. A grace Binx denied, thus, causing himself to live in the hellish search, bound in despair.
Works Cited
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy I: Hell, trans. Dorothy Sayers. New York: Penguin Books, 1949
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer. New York: Vintage International, 1988
Binx’s search continues through his attraction to the movies that “are onto the search, but throw him further from the truth. The search always ends in despair” (13). The movies are a way for him to fill the emptiness in his life. They give him incite into others lives and into his own life. “Before I see a movie it is necessary for me to learn about something about the theater or the people who operate it, to touch base before going inside” (74). This helps him learn more about how others live and lear...
Shapiro, Marianne. Woman Earthly and Divine in the Comedy of Dante. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1975.
Faustino, Mara. Heaven and Hell: A Compulsively Readable Compendium of Myth, Legend, Wisdom and Wit for Saints and Sinners. New York: Grove/Atlantic Inc., 2004. Print.
Thompson, Diane. “World Literature I (Eng 251): Dante's Inferno Study Guide.” Northern Virginia Community College. Last modified 2007. Accessed 30 September 2011. http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/eng251/dante.html
Inferno is the first and most famous of a three part series by Dante Alighieri known as the Divine Comedy that describes his journey to God through the levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise written in the early fourteenth century. Scholars spanning over nearly seven centuries have praised its beauty and complexity, unmatched by any other medieval poem. Patrick Hunt’s review, “On the Inferno,” states, “Dante’s extensive use of symbolism and prolific use of allegory— even in incredible anatomical detail—have been often plumbed as scholars have explored the gamut of his work’s classical, biblical, historical, and contemporary political significance” (9). In the story, each of the three main characters, Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice, represent
Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno of Dante. Trans. Robert Pinskey. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994. Print.
Inferno, the first part of Divina Commedia, or the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, is the story of a man's journey through Hell and the observance of punishments incurred as a result of the committance of sin. In all cases the severity of the punishment, and the punishment itself, has a direct correlation to the sin committed. The punishments are fitting in that they are symbolic of the actual sin; in other words, "They got what they wanted." (Literature of the Western World, p.1409) According to Dante, Hell has two divisions: Upper Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of incontinence, and Lower Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of malice. The divisions of Hell are likewise split into levels corresponding to sin. Each of the levels and the divisions within levels 7,8, and 9 have an analogous historical or mythological figure used to illustrate and exemplify the sin.
Alighieri, Dante. "The Inferno." The Divine Comedy. Trans. John Ciardi. New York: First New American Library Printing, 2003.
because of what his father told him as a young boy. His father said "he 's a true saint of God, a remover of worries and troubles, were it not for him I would have died miserably. This remark had stuck in his mind for years but became
Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno. Vol 1. Trans. Robert M. Durling. New York: Oxford UP, 1996.
Alghieri, Dante. "The Divine Comedy: Inferno." The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces: Expanded Edition In One Volume. Gen. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. 1032-1036.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Hell-Heaven.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 638-651. Print.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Notes Allen Mandelbaum and Gabriel Marruzzo. New York: Bantam Books, 1980
The Inferno was written by Dante Alighieri around 1314 and depicts the poet’s imaginary journey through Hell. Dante spent his life traveling from court to court both lecturing and writing down his experiences. His Divine Comedy – the three-part epic poem consisting of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso (Hell, Purgatory and Heaven)– is generally regarded as one of the greatest poetic feats ever accomplished. All three parts are incredible literary feats with symbolism so complex and beautiful that scholars are still unraveling all the details today. However, this essay will focus on the first part of Dante’s work, Inferno, which consists of 34 cantos. Dante’s Inferno is a masterpiece of allegorical imagery where Virgil represents human reason, Beatrice love and hope, and Dante mankind on the journey of the human soul through life to reach salvation.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy, Inferno. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.