Alienation and Escapism: An Existential Study of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer

Abstract

This study on Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer focuses on modern man's alienation in America. In the novel, the protagonist, Binx Bolling suffers from severe self-alienation which results from disintegration of his life in modern American society. He then resorts to the fictitious world of movies. As he watches movies, the impersonal images on the screen seem to offer him vision into the purpose and meaning of his own life. For him, watching movies becomes watching life and watching life becomes living life in the real sense. Thus, Percy shows Bolling alienated from society and lost in fictitious world of movies to expose haunting sense of present decadent capitalistic values and the fragmented self of modern American man