Project Director

Stuart, Christopher

Department Examiner

O'Dea, Gregory; Garrison, David; Henry, Jim

Department

Dept. of English

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of despair in Walker Percy's 1962 National Book Award winning novel The Moviegoer. It explores the philosophy of Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death as an important antecedent of the novel's portrayal of Binx Bolling's existential crisis. Additionally, the paper discusses Walker Percy's own thought about the devaluation of subjective experience in a modem scienctific world. Using these concepts as a vocabulary, the paper performs a reading of the text of the novel. The text asserts that the reader's own valuation of God and objectivity determine the possiblity or nonpossibility of Binx 's salvation by faith.

Degree

B. A.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Date

3-2003

Subject

Despair in literature; Existentialism in literature; American literature--Southern States

Name

Percy, Walker, 1916-1990--Criticism and interpretation

Discipline

Literature in English, North America

Document Type

Theses

Extent

ii, 37 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Call Number

LB2369.5 .F566 2003

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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