Binx, Love, and Existentialism
by
Dr. Nan DeVincentis-Hayes
Introduction
Walker Percy's The Message in the Bottle describes modern man's condition as "The Loss of Creature," "alienation," as being "The Man on the Train" (93-94), being in malaise, as needing to make a leap of faith. In each case, Percy is referring to the person who is distanced from the general flow of society--the same type of distance and detachment that Sartre, Heidegger, Marcel, and Camus expressed. This premise--that man as an existential being is filled with malaise because he can neither truly pin-point nor correct his discontent, except through religion--pervades all of Percy's books, especially The Moviegoer. His other five novels go even farther, demonstrating the resulting apocalypse of a malaised society, and that the end of the Post-Modern era is the end of Christianity.
In the case of Binx, it is left open. The ending is ambiguous . . . whether he returns to his mother's religion or takes his aunt's stoic values. (Lawson 75) . . . you never really know what happened to Binx . . . up in the air. He makes a separate peace and not a very good peace; it's compromised. (Lawson 234) The reader is left wondering if Binx (John Bickerson Bolling) has really taken the leap, for his loving Kate is dependent upon it, as his ability or inability to love is predicated on his acceptance or rejection of a God, a Christ, so says Kierkegaard. If Binx deceives others--Kate, Aunt Emily, even himself--he cannot have accepted Christianity and its holiness and, hence, Binx cannot love Kate.
Percy himself admits that The Moviegoer is perhaps the most ambiguous of all his works:
The Inner Binx
Percy does not draw his other protagonists as ambiguously as he does Binx. In his other five books, save perhaps for Barrett in The Last Gentleman, each of the protagonists takes the leap, but in Binx's case the question hangs, particuarly since The Moviegoer mimics The Stranger:
Like Camus' Meursault, he [Binx] seems intent on getting through his life with deliberately reduced expectations. (Broughton; Webb 4) This, then, allows us to think that Percy, since he has re-created The Stranger, is implying that Binx, like Merusault, is uncaring in society but not a part of it, that Binx has not found the answers. So he plows ahead with plans to marry Kate, not because he loves her, but because it is the best solution, since Aunt Emily has said that he is unethical and has taken advantage of Kate. Readers are not given enough proof to believe that Binx has taken the leap.
Too, maybe Binx marries Kate to spite Emily; or because he feels obligated for Kate; after all, as the "soldier" he has been raised to be by Emily, he has taken a private oath to care for Kate; he also feels he is owing to her because she has looked out for him, too. But whether this is true love on either's part remains a mystery: "He is not loving to Kate . . . that he is conscious of her at all. . . ." (Hardy 43).
And on pages 48-49, 51 Hardy goes on to say:
There simply is no ardor in his [Binx's] acceptance of Kate. The surrender never comes. . . . If . . . he loves Kate, it would . . . be . . . [for] her imperfections. . . . And he is not all improved in the epilogue . . . Binx seems all too content to have excluded--her . . . He is consistently reluctant to talk, consistently disposed to plead the impossibility of communication . . . Binx could have put Kate onto Kierkegaard.
Hardy's point is well made--Binx could have gotten Kate excited about Kierkegaard, not only so she could better understand Binx, but also so she could share with him. But Binx fails to do this simply because he does not care enough about Kate. His consciousness is limited to his own feelings, so there's no reason to think he is capable of moving beyond what he feels to what others' feel. Nor does he possess traits that make him trustworthy or reliable and capable of using commonsense. He is patronizing to everyone. He also lies. We see this when his brothers and sisters ask "When Our Lord raises up on the last day, will Lonnie be in a wheelchair or will be like us?" (Mg 210). Binx could have said he doesn't know, but instead he chooses to give false hope, to offer answers to questions no one has. Why does he lie? He comes from ethical stock, and he is searching for the truth, for answers to the Christ/God, for ways to rid his malaise. Why in his passionate pilgramage that he must follow (Lawson 13), does he find lying okay? As a liar, he can't keep straight what he tells other:
The chronology of Binx's account of his actions after Korea is hopelessly confused. First he tells [us] . . . he has been living in Gentilly for four years . . . But a few lines further on, he informs us that he lived for two years in the French Quarter . . . (Hardy 41-42)Binx, then, is an unreliabe narrator; therefore, when he gets to the point where we're supposed to infer that he has taken the leap, we have reason to doubt him. We also wonder about his mental stability--a product of his parent's shakey relationship, his father's unusual death, the loss of two brothers, and a war injury; a man who can't separate reality from fantasy, who exists in his own time modes (Lawson), who is dissatisfied with life, and apparently has severe longings, especially sexual yearnings. We must also ask, too, how devoted he will be to Kate after the novelty of marriage--and likewise his "permission" to indulge in sex with Kate--wears off. Like everything else with Binx, it is likely he will bore of her.
Binx is also a fraud, pretending to slum it when he is an aristocrat (class notes), pretending to like Sharon and Linda, when he wants only to have sex with them, faking that he likes Mercer when he has little use for him, faking concern about his stockbroker job when clients have little import to him. How do we not know, then, that he isn't pretending to have taken the leap when he hasn't? Pretending to love Kate when he doesn't? Pretending to be ethical when, as Emily accuses him, he isn't?
We see this, too, in Binx's transcending the plane of aesthetics--the stage of aimless searching for answers of the cosmos--to the religious step, thus bypassing Kierkegaard's ethical sphere altogether. Percy certainly intends it to be this way, so we can assume his main purpose in presenting this construction is to show us that Binx is not such a trustworthy guy, that we ought not to trust a man who never battles with moral judgements or the right decisions, a man who concerns himself only with fulfilling his needs. In the fender-bender scene with Sharon, Binx milks her attention, all the while lying about his injury, allowing her to go on thinking that his bad shoulder is from the accident and not the war. It is only after she presses him that he admits it's a war scar. We have to ask, then, what is Binx's purpose for enlisting an attention-getting ploy?
Unethical Binx
Binx not only is unreliable, untrustworthy, a liar, a fraud, patronizing, egotistical, and selfish, but he is also unethical. Emily demands of him: "Were you intimate with Kate?" He has taken advantage of a sick girl by whisking her off to Chicago just hours after she attempts suicide, and without telling Emily, who chastises:
. . . you are not capable of caring for anyone . . . you were abusing a sacred trust in
carrying that poor child off betraying . . . [the] trust and affection she has for you . . .
Do you have any notion of how I felt when, not twelve hours after Kate attempted
suicide, she vanishes without trace? I have been assuming that between us . . . our
kind of folks have . . . grace . . . class . . . You're damn right we're better. We're
better because we do not shirk our obligations . . . I wanted to pass on to you . . .
duty, a nobility . . . a gentleness with women . . . (MG 194-196).
For Emily, there is no greater disappointment than having Binx, who is like her son, betray
her. His behavior is antithetical to everything she has taught him; antithetical to his inherited
class which separates the aristocrat from the proletariat. Binx, in Emily's eyes, is no better
than a commoner, so it is unlikely Emily could have engineered the entire thing--Binx'
obligation to Kate, his marrying her, enrolling in school--because Emily is on to him and now
distrusts him. She loves Kate too much to force Binx on her.
Too, Binx's sexual behavior is ill-mannered. By all standards, he is a playboy who longs for
sexual relations to fill the gap, the emptiness he experiences in life. He likes women for their
bodies and cares little about their minds:
. . . my secretary . . . Sharon . . .working for me two weeks . . . the fact is that for
two weeks I have thought of little else . . . Her bottom is so beautiful . . . (Mg 55)
Binx orders her to take a trip with him where he aims to seduce her, for he is like Meursault:
"the only real pleasure he [Binx] knows is sensual pleasure. . . " (Masters 22). But his problem
goes deeper than being over-sexed; he sees women either as ladies or whores, and nothing in
between. As much as he yearns for sex, he believes he should marry first, so his attempts to
make love with Kate fail:
The failure of sex is akin to the failure of signs and solution outside Binx to provide
definitive answers to the problems. (Broughton; Webb 19)
At one moment Binx sees Kate as princess and virginial, while the next--as is the case on the
train--she is a whore:
. . . she [Kate] is associated with the theme of lady and whore . . . she thinks
she ought to indulge with Binx on the train . . . because she thinks sex is what he
wants of her . . . he [Binx] failed in the sexual episode with Kate in her boldness
. . . . (Tharp 57).
Thus he and Kate never have that magical moment where mind and body totally fuse--that
moment of inter-subjectivity (MB) where both become one, and each would die for the other.
This moment does not happen while Percy has the two characters on stage, and the reason
that it does not happen is because they have nothing to share since Kate has not experienced
the conversion Binx supposedly has:
The mainspring of intersubjectivity is the shared secret. (Luschei 54).
Thus we are led to believe that it is unlikely that the two love each other. Neither offer
themselves to the other, and so the two remain static entities. That they do not share their
inner-selves with one another, do not present the moment of intersubjectivity, we can assume
that "the unification which allows each person to transcend his own separateness through
sharing and caring for the other" (Hobbs; Broughton 47) does not take place.
Kate's Flaw
The marriage will not work because Kate is flawed. Like Binx, she is ill, and it is becuse of her sickness that she is brave enough to risk love and marriage with Binx, though she too is as deficient in love as he is. Because she is a woman who is afraid to live, she clings to Binx who she believes can help and protect her; she confuses love with need. The thought of having to do anything on her own upsets her, so readers should not think the inhibited love is only on Binx's part. Kate's illness--neurosis, anxieties, suicidal tendencies, anxieties--prohibit Binx from loving her even if he were capable of it. Combining Kate's weighty problems with Binx's inability to let go even for a second, makes for a bad marriage. If Binx has truly taken the leap, he would have given up a part of himself to God and Kate--neither of which Percy's makes apparent. Kate and Binx's problems can only serve to intensify an already weak relationship.
Too, that Kate misses the point of the exchange in the car between Binx and his brothers and sisters, tells us that she will most likely not participate in Binx's (supposedly) newly-chosen way of life. We cannot expect much from a couple who is split on the most important aspect of life--that of the soverign wayfare who believes and the non-searcher is not aware of her not-believing.
The weakness in the novel, then, is the ambiguity surrounding Binx and the leap, and the success or failure of the marriage, which we can only gage in the epilogue:
The epilogue tells us nothing of whether they [Binx and Kate] have managed any better sexually after marriage . . . Neither are we told whether they are married in the Church. But . . . evidence points to the possibility that they do not share the "infinite passion" at least partly because they have never shared any finite passion, etiher sexual or intellectual. (Hardy 51)
The marriage, then, is of concern. Can Binx stay tied to a woman who is uncommitted to his way of life? Can he stay married to a woman who sees through him, who locates and destroys his weapon--moviegoing? Does she not pose a threat to him? Will she not tire someday soon of his game-playing that extends to all levels of his existence? Thus, more evidence piles up against Binx, who is unable to give entirely of himself, to leap into darkness, to trust someone other than himself, including an Almighty of some form. It appears, then, he will remain in malaise while deceiving himself and others that he loves Kate and has found God.
Binx's Malaise
Percy shows the state of man as existential, that of being malaised--a condition of "everydayness" (Heidegger) which robs the post-modernist of the ability to love himself and others. And like the malaise, so exists the absurdity--the ironical, inexplicable, paradoxical. Reading The Stranger's first line ("Maman died today; or was it yesterday?") is absurd, for who does not know when one's birthline has been severed. Sartre defines absurdity as "the senseless negation of man" (Bree 174). The antidote for malaise and absurdity is Kierkegaard's "leap of faith," a leap into the darkness with-out reason that is predicated on such Kierkegaardian motifs as The Fall, the Incarnate, Concept of Irony, Melancholy, Either/Or (with rotation inherent), Christendom, Fear and Trembling, Original Sin, Stages of Life, Climacus-Anti-Climacus, Repetition (Stendahl). Binx, who is Merusault, must be given credit for initiating his search, for this action tells us that he is at least aware that he is in despair, and thus is on to something (Sweeney 30).
Percy works all these Kierkegaardian philosophical premises into Binx, even those dealing with Kierkegaard's view on love and marriage, which not only affected his relationship with Regine (Stendahl), but it also, at times, paralleled Binx's love for Kate. For Kierkegaard, Regine was his Dantean Beatrice, while Kate is Binx's. Where Percy and Kierkegarrd depart is in Soren's breaking off his marital engagement in order to make the leap to devotion, and Binx's becoming engaged at the presumed expression of the leap. In both cases, the gesture--breaking off an engagement and initiating one--is used as a tool for love. Stendahl puts it best when referring to Kierkegaard's decision: This is the question: Is he unable to go through with the engagement because he is maimed by his yearning for God, or is he using religion to cover up self-centeredness, plain selfishness . . . (149)
Kierkegaard believed it was not possible to love Regine when he should have loved God
instead; this was his "Either/Or" situation. Stendahl offers:
He [Kierkegaard broke] off the engagement. . . . He concluded that
exposing Regine to his . . . existence . . . would constitute . . . cruelty . . .
there would be . . . collisions between actuality
. . . and his melancholy. . . . Sending the ring back, he asked her [Regine]
to release him . . . the engagement was broken. (57-59)
But with Binx, the opposite action takes place--an engagement is sealed instead of split open,
an engagement made without any evidence by Percy that Binx is truly converted to Christianity
from his position of disbelief, for a person who does kind acts (such as Binx marrying Kate)
should not be confused with a person who is a Christian.
Thus, it's questionable if Binx has taken the leap or if he even loves Kate. Why taking the leap
is paramount to loving is because Kierkegaardism dictates that those who do not leap into
Christianity and all its devotion, also cannot love, and thus they are condemned to live in
malaise. The leap is an expression of love and trust; a leap that Binx apparently does not take,
for he is not given enough reason to. The Black man's appearance seems too weak a motivation
for a man who has begun the search when looking at dung beetles in Korea, and has kept on
searching off and on, until this one particular Ash Wednesday. Binx's seeing the Black enter
and exit a Catholic church does not warrant his falling into belief after all the years he has spent
searching; some stronger and more obvious cause is needed. If Percy wants us to belief that
Binx is "reborn," he needs to give us a better reason for such a conversion; maybe even a hint
as to what Binx sees in the "Negro" that the rest of us miss. The words are deceptively simple,
as the message is inherently complex:
The Negro has. . . come outside [Catholic Church]. It is impossible to be
sure that he received ashes. When he gets in his Mercury, he..sits looking
down at something on the seat beside him. . . I watch him. . . in the
rearview mirror. It is impossible to say why he is here. Is it. . . the
business of coming in the world? Or is it because he believes that God
himself is present here. . . .or is he here for both reasons: through some
. . . trick of grace, coming for the one and receiving the other as God's own
importuante bonus?
It is impossible to say (MG 205-6).
This passage reflects Binx's questioning, his uncertainty, so he still does not have answers.
Nor does Percy give us clues as to what he wants us and Binx to discover. If it is to mean
that Binx has somehow through the Black man's wearing ashes as a symbol of faith, come
to find the Truth, a God, then it is intentionally ambiguous, for one has to read and re-read
into the passage in order to find it.
Maybe Percy is hinting at something altogether different--that Binx's problem, his malaise,
is a result, not of the post-modern era, but of his own faulty internal mechanisms. Maybe Binx
is too stoic to be able to love Kate, too pathologically moody to try, too much of a game-player
to be serious enough to assume the roles of breadwinner, lover, supporter, and best friend,
especially when it comes to loving someone as flawed as Kate. After all, we must consider
that Kate will end up living with a man who focuses his entire life on the games of rotation,
repetition (both authentic and unauthentic) (Hobson 17), duplication, and certification--all of
which he experiences through movie-going. What if Binx is marrying Kate as a means of
escape, a rotation, a game? Thus we must ask, will he make a loving husband? Percy says
about Binx:
It still remains open whether Binx is pathological or whether he's
expressing an authentic mood of the time. It's an open question. I would
like to think he's an embodiment of a certain pathology of the twentieth
century" (Lawson 302).
Or maybe Percy wants
us to look at Binx in the car with his brothers and sisters and say, "Look
at Binx! He is a 'new man,' changed because he has found God," which has
occurred through Lonnie's death. But this scene is told in the epilogue--a place
of flashback rather than forward movement, and, hence, if this is that important
to the hero, why is it not in the body of the novel, unfolding as the rest of
the action, giving it the weight it deserves?
Other possible causes for Binx's behavior is his problem of distinguishing reality
from fantasy --the fugue state many Percyian characters go into to jar their
memories--painful memories. Binx's pain stems back to his father's death. How
can we expect a man like Binx to know himself and love others through himself
when he cannot find the thread that connects him to something familiar and identifiable--the
umbilical cord to understanding? Binx has been repressing his father's death
for so long that he is now consumed with it, bubbling inside him, ready to blow
at an opportune moment, but we do not see this happening on the pages of The
Moviegoer. Instead, Binx is suave, cool, and in control. But repression,
said Freud, is the undoing of all good men. And in all of Percy's novels we
see the connection between the protagonist and his homelife, growing up. All
the fathers, except for Binx's, have commited suicide, and in a sense, Binx's
father did as much by volunteering for a feat ("a soldier's death")
that is at best crazy. Can readers expect Binx to heal on his own when the pain
and hatred smolder deep within him? Can we expect such a preoccupied man as
Binx to be capable of loving another? Especially when the other person has as
many emotional problems as he does?
Binx's intent to serve as Kate's loving husband is just another magical illusion
he initiates and role-plays. He is too ironic and distant of a character--something
we infer from Percy's style--to have us believe that he would not be as detached
in his relationship with Kate. Too, Percy draws Binx as being narcisstic, self-centered,
into his own needs. How can we think Binx's self-love will be transfered to
Kate? It seems too much to hope for.
Percy also leads us to the conclude that Binx does not love Kate because language
(communication) is used up. This is thematic to Percy's belief and is based
on C.S. Peirce's theories--that loneliness (alienation) comes from a triadic
creature (man) trying "to explain the whole world by dyadic theory. . .
." (Lawson 297). Percy illustrates how language as a medium for understanding
and communicating has become ineffective; thus, if we give Binx the benefit
of the doubt and say that maybe he is capable of loving Kate, we would also
have to say that he will not find a forum for expressing this love, Hence, it's
wasted, for what use is love if there is not a vehicle to send it, nor a means
of receiving it? That language is unshared, used up, is a common Percyian message
(MB)--one that demonstrates the futility of loving someone and not being
able to get it across. Love, then, like everything else in society, including
humankind, is devalued.
What can we credit Binx with, if not loving Kate? Perhaps it is the search he
has instituted, although Coles implies it is not a sincere, honest search--another
sign that Binx is not trustworthy: "Kate is almost completely self-absorbed.
. . . But at least she does not pretend to search" (159).
Binx's Search
Kierkegaard believed that man lived in fear and trembling--a dread of how his life will unfold,
a dread or anxiety of what is awaiting him at the end of that life. This constant dread results
in melancholy. To overcome this state, man has to go on a search for answers as to who he is.
The search, in turn, will transcend man through the three stages of existence, when, at the last
stage, he can take that leap. Dread is always the background to the leap (Stendahl 133). The
three stages, said Kierkegaard, include the aesthetical, the ethical, and the last stage which is
the religious.
The aesthete is shallow; he sets his sights no higher than his senses; he is caught up in
everydayness and lives life for its pleasure. An ethical person, though a step above the
aesthete, is little more than a robot with scruples, one who reacts out of stimulus-respone,
much like Monsieur Meursault.
Percy models Binx after Meurseault--a man with no principles, who lives life moment-to-
moment, has no bonds with others, not even his mother, nor a belief in the after-life or in any form
of a God. But Percy's version is more hopeful than Camus', even though Binx, unlike Meursault, is
dishonest (however, a close reading and a deconstruction of The Stranger show that Camus
does give hints to the contrary). Binx is a more positive character than Meursault because he
makes an attempt to find answers via a search--one limited to verticalism--while Meursault cares
about nothing, not even finding answers. Because the vertical search fails, Binx has "undertaken
a different kind of search, a horizontal search" (Lawson; Tharpe, 27). But Binx's search is a
facade for holding at arm's length--for evading--the moment he must come to terms with
existence. Hobson explains:
. . . difference between Binx. . . and. . . Meursault is Binx's. . . facade,
which. . . renders him in more psychic danger than. . . Meursault. . . .the
nearer [Binx] comes to exercising his freedom, making choices. . .
standing by them. . . the more. . . evasive of that leap he becomes by
means of defense against the moment of decision. (30)
Percy is showing us that Binx is truly no different than Meursault, and knowing Meursault,
one would never think him capable of true love; a man who has no commitments, a man who
puts up false appearances, a man who has no ethics, a man who does nothing greater than
watch movies, could never be true or honest in love.
The search, says Percy, always leads to decision-making. If the protagonist chooses to
believe, to take the leap, he does so knowing he can only wait, watch, and listen until the end
does come. This is what many critics believe Binx has done--that he has seen the symbol of
penitence on the Black man and taken the leap, and now sits waiting, watching, and listening,
with Kate at his side while he studies medicine. But based on what is presented in this paper
as evidence to the opposite, it's apparent that Binx has again employed an evasive trick--pretending
to have leapt, while inside himself he is the same as Meursault. Thus he does not love nor hate
Kate, for he is incapable of love, as is true for Merusault:
Meursault thinks and acts. . . different. . . .For him, neither love nor
individual loves exist. All that counts is the present and the concrete.
(Bree 113)
Like Meursault, Binx goes on being alienated in a meaning-less world, and thus the search
continues. But he does not find the truth; what he does find instead are new avoidance
techniques, ways to make a young woman happy, if not himself, and a means of smoothing
over the rough edges with Emily. Though he does not literally give up Kate as Kierkegaard
had done with Regine, Binx has given up the ideal of loving her and accepts, instead, marriage
as the symbol of that love.
Perhaps he believes that marriage is a good "sign" for a man who has just turned thirty?
Conclusion
Based on the proof offered in this paper, we can now give serious consideration to the idea
that Binx neither takes the leap of faith nor loves Kate, and that, as a result, Binx will continue
to live in malaise--with or without Kate--while Kate will remain ill.
For those who counter this--that Binx has taken the leap--the only reasonable response is
that although Binx has the desire to believe, he lacks the faith and love needed to maintain the
belief, that something is missing in his actions and thus the full benefits of being "re-born" are
minimized; or, as Hardy offers:
. . . faith is a divine gift. But the trouble with Binx's Christianity. . .
is that it is deficient in charity (56).
And on page 37, Hardy sums up this paper's premise:
. . . the outcome of the novel is "not surprising"
. . . it is . . . inevitable, [but it] is not
. . . to say that it is convincing
. . . to take Binx seriously is not necessarily to say that he is altogether
persuasive.
At the very least, though, we can say that Binx has tried.
End
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