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A Study of Psychological Reverberations in Walker Percy's Mukt Shabd Journal ISSN NO : 2347-3150 From Inertia to Dynamism: A Study of Psychological Reverberations in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer 1A.Susai Devanesan Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of English, Nehru Memorial College, Affiliated to Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India *2Dr. K. T. Tamilmani Dean, Academic Affairs and Head & Associate Professor, Department of English, Nehru Memorial College, Affiliated to Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India ABSTRACT Human life is a priceless opportunity for growth, a spiritual journey of Redemption. Despite the Eden’s material flavor, the present-day man is estranged in constant despair and deep-seated ambivalence of quandary. People often don’t really look for truth but are dogmatic about what they believe is true. The different forms of mental illness, such as Binx Bolling’s urbane melancholy in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, are essentially placed into the existential phenomenon of human situations. Percy, as a physician of the soul, posits medicine to this disquietude of modern man. Reflecting upon the disoriented and unsatisfied past, the protagonist, Binx Bolling tries to reconstruct the present reality making it more meaningful. Though not apparently, inspired by Catholicism, Percy in The Moviegoer propels advocacy against the patrimonial melancholy inherited and current spiritual scrambles. Every individual must discern who he is and what he is here for, transcending the wayfaring and shattering passivity and everydayness. Such authentic self-awareness gives vent for true humanism. When the authentic self is trudging from inertia to dynamism, there is a new beginning. This article tries to explore the transition of Binx Bolling from the past-ridden estrangement and passivity to authentic and meaningful existence. Keywords: Opportunity, Life, Dynamism, Transformation, Existential Situation, Everydayness, Passivity, Melancholy, Inertia, Metamorphosis, Transition and Estrangement 1. INTRODUCTION Literature aims at a profitable contrivance to merit the fellow individual to forge a significant and purposeful living on earth. An individual’s crop up on this earth cannot be fashioned flawless and unalloyed. Stumbled, falling and rising again is a learning process. The deep-seated ambivalence and trauma of an individual arising out of unprecedented tragedies necessitate a serious succor. Every Individual is potentially capable of arriving the Truth they thirst for. The viability of human existence is contingent on holistic and metamorphic transformation -physical, emotional and psychological- of an individual self. Literature features to this convalescence of the earthly existence. Oeuvre of Walker Percy assists a reader to ameliorate the past-ridden disorientation suggesting a new opportunity to renew life. The present gimmicky technological advancements never protrude any guarantee for internal happiness. The human nature, however, aspires to seek after such transitory possessions and gets lost into them missing the paramount aspect of the earthly life. These worldly ingredients that appear to be burnishing in the beginning certainly end up meaningless and culminate into the disease of everydayness, malice and patrimonial melancholy. Addressing this existential anguish is one of prominent themes of Nineteenth century American literature. The emerging capitalism and the negative reminiscences of the civil war in 1950s made the life in the south more absurd and distorted. Having lost the southern heroic identity, men and women were in search of meaningful existence. The Volume IX, Issue VI, JUNE/2020 Page No : 3267 Mukt Shabd Journal ISSN NO : 2347-3150 past-ridden existential question was the main feature of the search. To quench this thirst for finding the individual identity, authors like Walker Percy came out with deep and philosophical novels summoning the readers for an individual conversion. The Moviegoer is one of the best examples explaining the internal transformation that every individual must encounter. Walker Percy, the National Book award winner in 1962, traverses the disease of everydayness manipulating his intense regret over man’s loss of sense of sin and malice and tries to unify the fragmented man with authentic self. For him, an oeuvre is not merely a sophisticated form of entertainment but a serious transaction between the reader and the writer. This outstanding writer of the twentieth century exposes the serious phenomenon of earthly existence with his excellent sensibility corresponding to all the complications of life that the readers can discern and with the impeccable faith that he has in humanity and the rectification possible for the alienated man. His preoccupation is not on the theological treatise but to give assurance that God can write in crooked lines. Percy’s faith is based on an underlying assurance of God’s presence even when all the signs proclaim otherwise. For him, the purpose of the earthly existence is to discover the God’s genuine presence in fellow human being. His distinctly southern sensibility rooted in Christian existential philosophy and profound Catholic doctrines exegete the theological themes like God’s gracefulness, fragility of human nature and the relevant eschatological significance etc., Percy’s principal personae in all his novels are substantially successful postmodern men who in spite of their social intelligence, thirst for renewal in the debris of postmodern world of golf courses, shopping malls, X-rated movie theaters. These apparently affluent men in worldly affairs -drinking, roaming out of professional duties, dating with women etc., -fall into abstraction at one point while trying to purpose their lives and miserably fail in this process of philosophical speculation and fall into melancholic everydayness and alienation. The rest is all about his struggle with himself and his existential anguish trudging on towards Redemption assisted by the grace of God. After drawn-out convalescence, in his 40s, the intensive comprehension of the modern existential agony and the personal thirst to alleviate the modern malice of alienation and perplexity, set Percy on fire to write about a man whose attraction to movies and the idealized protagonists on the screen of the then American reality, provided refuge against the aforementioned malicious realities and the existential anguish of the narrator temporarily. As the fictitious representation of gaiety is fugacious, the narrator falls prey to everydayness. Thus, the novel interprets the existential theology of Kierkegaard and develops a kind of possibility of leap into faith overcoming the despair just as the narrator remarks, “to make little contribution and leave the world just a little better off.” (MG 88) (William Alexander Percy, Lantern on the Levee,75) Usually Percy’s heroes are never defined by their social order but are willing to be identified with set of values and their choices. This new view of the human individual by Percy is in Sartre’s eye the authentic self, searching for a true life that bears meaning. As the plot progress, they are endowed with enormous amount of freedom and freewill to move toward the future. They are men of hope as in Sarthe’s existential philosophy moving from non-fixed lacuna to a vibrant and dynamic future. Their main stream of action is to resolve the “Little Way” of the ordinary and passive life to the top of their professions, or even to prove God’s existence by personal ordeal. In spite of their psychological imbalance, they lead a decent life in suburbs of Gentilly or Paradise Estates spending their time playing golf and barbeque in the backyard and watch television. At one point, they recognize the meaninglessness in disguised merrymaking and try to overcome the condition. Will Barrett, protagonist of the Second Coming indicate: “the lives of other people seemed even more farcical than his own…? How did they manage to deceive themselves and even to appear to live normally, work as usual, play golf, tell jokes, and argue politics? Was he crazy or was it rather the case that other people went to any length to disguise from themselves that fact that their live farcical?” (Percy, Second Coming, 3) Volume IX, Issue VI, JUNE/2020 Page No : 3268 Mukt Shabd Journal ISSN NO : 2347-3150 The disguised authentic self as portrayed in Sartre and Camus and Kierkegaard’s aesthetic stage, realize that the affluence of life cannot assist him escape wild anxiety, depression, abstraction, and alienation and even considering or attempting suicide. Self-destructive natured fathers predominantly affect the protagonists terminating deep ambivalence and trepidation. Ralph Ellison observes that Percy is obsessed with theme of suicide and present his protagonist searching for their identity in segments. (Ralph Ellison, 177) As physician, Percy proceeds diagnosing the psychic illness which begets afflictions and treats the trauma leading protagonist into religious faith despairing the suicidal fathers. Kierkegaard’s leap-into faith restores the protagonists from the inferno of sexual obsession, societal collapse, and meditation on suicide into the quiet life of faith. As Kate says to Binx, “The only happy men are wounded me.” (MG 145) Percy himself has revamped his wounded self. In his Introduction to ‘Lanterns on the Levee’ Percy remarks that “through William Alexander he gained vocation and in a real sense a ‘second self.” (Walker Percy, ix) He reflects, “Surely it is the highest tribute to the best people we
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