Lost in the malaise : the alienated self and modes of existence in The Moviegoer and The Last Gentleman.

In this project, I analyze how Walker Percy’s novels The Moviegoer and The Last Gentleman portray alienation in postwar, middle-class American culture from a religious standpoint. This thesis argues that Percy reimagines Soren Kierkegaard’s three modes of existence (aesthetic, ethical, and religious) for a 20th century American context and, by doing so, appeals to a secular audience. In both body chapters, I use Kierkegaard’s modes as a framework to analyze the novels’ characters, themes, and proposed ways of living. The first body chapter focuses on The Moviegoer, while the second body chapter shifts to The Last Gentleman. I conclude that these novels skillfully adapt Kierkegaard’s existential modes to postwar American concerns and implicitly argue for the religious mode as the key to true self-actualization.