The Search or Death.

      Moviegoer has captured my attention much more the second time I've had to read than the first. I have been laughing while fighting off a sense of depression while reading it. The need for God is so strong in Percy's characters, I never noticed that before. The idea of a quest or search for truth, something bigger themselves compels them. 

     The main character Binx, he's aware of the search, his need for something. Binx on the surface seems totally satisfied in the status quo. "I am a model tenant and a model citizen and take pleasure in doing all that is expected of me...It is my pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a neat styrene card with one's name on it certifying...one's right to exist". Binx is perfectly happy to be whatever society tells him to be, yet this is unsatisfying to him. Deep down inside Binx is missing something. He is made aware of the possibility of a search, he awoke with a taste of war. Why would Percy use war to make the possibility known? War is chaotic war doesn't stay contained within categories. 

   When a man is on the ground battling his enemy he doesn't think "What would society tell me to do?" His instincts, training, and desperation for survival is what fuels him; but his morality drives his decisions. War isn't a perfectly timed and coordinated dance, its ugly and hellish. One has to fight to live. Things don't make sense. Some things happen that are unexplainable in war, horrible things and wonderful things. You encounter a need in war, there has to be a bigger purpose for slaying others, a solider needs a reason to fight. There has to be a good and a bad. For that to exist there has to be someone or something that originally determined good and bad, there must be a universal good and a universal bad. Why would men go to war if it was just about survival, it would be called survival. There wouldn't be any problems with war if good and bad didn't exist, no one would argue against it or for it, it would just be survival of the fittest. War makes one aware of the possibility of a search, there has to be something missing. 

   Binx struggles with this he is a man who relies on science and rejects religion, but he knows there is a search. "The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life". This phrase seemed platonic to me, making me think of a prisoner tied inside the cave. "To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be on to something is to be in despair". If Binx really believed what Science taught was true, there would be no search. Everything would be a close-circuit, man would be who he is strictly because of genetics. War makes one question the thoughts. The search has begun. Honestly I believe Binx's search is to find out if God exists or not. If a God exists, is it the God Christianity has taught him to believe in? Binx says the 98% of Americans believe in God and 2% are atheists or agnostic. " Have 98% of Americans found what I seek or are the so sunk in everydayness that not even the possibility of a search has occurred to them?" 

   Percy reflects the struggle an average human has to deal with it, does God exist? Binx's struggle is one that every person faces in the wake of Postmodernism. Is God dead? Is there meaning behind anything? Are we really different from the animals? There is a possibility of the search, which means a search is possible. If a search is possible, then its possible God does exist. If God exists then there is meaning in life. Otherwise is as Binx thinks, "For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead".