Percy's The Moviegoer

Briefly define what you believe to be the aim of Binx's search in The Moviegoer. Does he seem to you to be a genuine seeker? If so, what are the signs within the novel that indicate he is genuine? Finally, do you believe that at the end of the novel, he has found what he has been seeking?

hurston's "their eyes were watching god"

Beginning with the last full paragraph on page 60 and concluding at the page break on page 62--"Out in the swamp they made great ceremony over the mule.... The yaller mule was gone from the town except for the porch talk, and for the children visiting his bleaching bones now and then in the spirit of adventure"--the narrator does something peculiar by personifying the buzzards. They engage in a kind of antiphonal response, the leader questioning those gathered, they in turn making reply.

What do you think is the purpose of this personification? What's being suggested here about the connection between people and buzzards? What might the mule represent first to the people gathered, secondly to the buzzards? Is this scene merely comical, or do you see something profound here about the novel's commentary on the collective character of the townspeople?

Faulkner

Consider various views of God articulated and enacted by characters in Faulkner's Light in August. To be sure, Hightower, Byron Bunch, Mr. McEachern, Doc Hines, and Lena Grove seem to have competing and sometimes contradictory views of God.

Your assignment is to discuss in one or two paragraphs one of the more disturbing views of God found in the novel. What might the novel suggest about the way in which people use their understanding of God to justify violence, racism, cruelty, and a host of other evils? And does the novel give us an alternative presentation of God, or of a character’s understanding of God?

As you ponder this matter, you may consider also the following excerpt from Alfred Kazin’s God and the American Writer:

“When his daughter ran away with a ‘Mexican’ circus hand, Doc Hines killed the man, and after his daughter died in childbirth on Christmas Eve, he left the baby on the steps of an orphanage. He even became janitor in the place to make sure that the ‘nigger’ would never be allowed to contaminate anyone.

“This race madness goes hand in hand with a Calvinist belief in the elect and the hopeless sinfulness of others. It is found both in Joe Christmas’s rigidly doctrinaire foster father, Calvin McEachern, and in his future mistress Joanna Burden, a descendant of New Hampshire Puritans who came to the South in order to change its ways. These torments about purity and guilt are to Faulkner the white Southerner the remains of an inhuman creed that added bigotry and arrogance to the curse of slavery. These are the fruits of a church that has lost its spiritual function and that has been deserted by the Reverend Gail Hightower, who spends his days in reveries of the Confederacy’s irretrievable glory….

“There are no gods in Faulkner’s world—only ‘the Opponent’ checkmating Lena’s seducer and ‘the Player’ who will idly move Joe Christmas’s murderer toward the victim.”

Remember, you are not responding to Kazin’s statements, but to the novel (or rather, a small section of the novel). Kazin’s remarks may simply help you to think about the matter.

reaction to Scarlet Letter

I'd like to continue the line of inquiry I posed this morning on the relation between the chapter titled "The Custom-House: Introductory to 'The Scarlet Letter'" and what we might call the novel proper. Some of you talked about thematic connections and observed the similarity between the narrator and Hester Prynne, as both are drawn to a place "where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime" (chapter 5). Does the novel propose yet another reason for yoking these two sections together?

Obviously, the narrator uses the Custom-House setting to reveal how he discovered the documents that enabled him to piece together the story he tells of Hester Prynne. But beyond the convenience of establishing a reason for the telling of the tale, does the Custom-House introduction serve some other purpose? Perhaps a simpler way of putting the question is to ask whether the narrator is suggesting that what happened in Salem in the 1640s has any bearing on what is happening in Salem in the 1850s. In other words, what effect does a culture's past have on its life in the present? In answering this question, do not speak in generalities. Rather, find a place in the novel itself that seems to you to link the Salem of 1640 to the Salem of 1850.

Do not spend more than 30 or 45 minutes trying to answer this question. And remember, there is no "right" answer. Have some fun with this exercise.

Required novels for the semester

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

William Faulkner, Light in August

Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Cormac McCarthy, Child of God

Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Chet Raymo, The Dork of Cork