Experience Greater than the Mundane

        In Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Binx Bolling is a man who travels to different areas to view movies; he does this in order to experience something greater than everyday life. This is his function as a moviegoer. Through Binx, Percy is showing the reader the need to experience something beyond the quotidian. Binx makes the effort to see different films and through his effort, he is able to experience something that is only available through viewing the interaction of others. He is able to partially live within these viewing experiences because they give him something to talk about and they allow him to escape the malaise of everyday life. Percy makes Binx do this to show the reader that they have the ability to transcend the experience of the mundane in order to experience something worthwhile in his life. Binx struggles through dealing with his social life because cannot easily relate to other people. "For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can" (Percy, 100). Binx feels this struggle with others because he is struggling with his own existence. He is almost thirty and he has no idea what he wants to do with his life. Percy is portraying a struggle that every man and woman go through as some point in his or her life. Through Binx, Percy is having the reader ponder his own existence and question what he does to escape the malaise of the mundane experience.