The Aesthetic Individual and the New South in the Age of Alienation in Walker Percy’S the Moviegoer

Abstract This paper addresses Walker Percy’s first novel, The Moviegoer, tracing the use of existentialist tropes in its narrative construction in order to delineate the problematic condition of the human individual in the postwar South. The protagonist’s search for an authentic self and his escape from the snares of everydayness are put into perspective in the context of Percy’s professed understanding of Kierkegaard and Sartre, against the background of a South increasingly alienated from her ancient traditions