Moviegoer~April 26

1. Binx is on a search for normalcy. The book never specifies if his search is for himself or a life partner, but all I know is that he is indeed searching for something. I think after the war he started to realize that the things that once made sense to him like an education and a job, just did not matter anymore. The troubling thing that he's battling with is the fact that now that he knows what's not important, he has to wonder what is important. This search for normalcy is making Binx question his sense of belonging. Nobody in his family can truly relate to what he has been through and what he has physically seen in the war. Binx puts on this facade as to say everything is ok, but it's not and the only person that can see that is Kate. Although Kate may not be able to completely relate to Binx, she is quite familiar with the troubled look that Binx has and that no one will notice.

2. I think that Binx gets a sense of carelessness when he goes to these movies. He gets to sit in a room where he has full access to someone's life and he can pick-and-prod his way through the character's issues much easier than his own. But when the movie is over, I feel that Binx tries to make certain moments of his life exactly like a movie scene. For example, in the beginning you find out that he is a stockbroker who often dates his secretaries. There were a lot of movies that came to my mind when I read the first couple of pages such as "Someone Like you" starring Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman; "What a Woman Wants" starring Mel Gibson; and "What's the Worst that Could Happen " starring Martin Lawrence and Danny Devito. In all of these movies some male character ends up treating females really badly and the female character makes them pay for what they did. But in the end someone eventually finds their happiness with the right person. At the end of the Moviegoer, Binx does end up marrying "a girl for him", but it does not exactly correlate with the movies that he has seen. Another example is how Binx always seems to take long strolls on the beach either by himself or with one of his flavors of the month. Now, there are people in the world that actually like to take strolls along the beach, but most of the time they do this every once and awhile. Binx does it all the time and I just figured that maybe this particular activity is either one of his favorite scenes in a movie or if this is just a recurring scene in the different movies that he has viewed. Copying or reliving these is movies is how Binx makes sense of the world that he has left to live out. This after-war life is very new to him and I feel that the movies are teaching him how to live out the rest of his life.