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- Title
Undefined Man: Sartrean Reading of American Novelist Walker Percy's The Moviegoer.
- Authors
Zhenping WANG
- Abstract
This paper is an exploration of the cross-cultural influence of Jean-Paul Sartre on Walker Percy, through a detailed analysis of the novel The Moviegoer. Jean-Paul Sartre was a twentieth century French existentialist philosopher whose theory of existential freedom is regarded as a positive thought that provides human beings infinite possibilities to hope and to create. It is specifically significant when the world is facing global crisis in economics, politics, and human behavior. The Moviegoer was the first novel by Walker Percy, one of the few philosophical novelists in America, who was very much influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre. Binx Bolling, the existentialist hero in the novel, must decide how to live his life in this world. He does not feel comfortable when Aunt Emily makes family stories to transfigure him, and when she preaches Stoicism as instructions in how to become a man. As an intentional consciousness, he feels he loses all the ability to think and to act. He starts a metaphysical search hinted by a new way of looking at the world around him to transcend "everydayness." The paper is an attempt to apply Sartre's theory of existential freedom as an approach to see how Binx resists, falls into, and resists again Aunt Emily's tricks and traps of confinement and becomes a man undefined.
- Subjects
INFLUENCE (Literary, artistic, etc.); MOVIEGOER, The (Book : Percy); PERCY, Walker, 1916-1990; SARTRE, Jean-Paul, 1905-1980; PHILOSOPHERS
- Publication
Intercultural Communication Studies, 2012, Vol 21, Issue 3, p138
- ISSN
1057-7769
- Publication type
Article