The philosophical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel in Walker Percy’s novel ‘The moviegoer’

The article analyzes the philosophical aspect of Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer, created under the influence of European existentialist ideas. The formal aspects of the text organization were borrowed by the writer from Sartre and Camus, while the idea of the novel was shaped under the influence of Kierkegaard’s and Marcel’s philosophy. The central theme of the novel is the overcoming of despair and discovery of faith as a source of both personal happiness and social well-being. Kierkegaard’s concept of freedom as the necessary basis for spiritual self-realization is contrasted in the novel with Sartre’s atheistic perception of freedom, demonstrating the impossibility of discovering one’s own identity in a godless world. The image of the central character in the novel is consciously based by the writer on Kierkegaard’s philosophical ideas, his interpretation of the main stages of human life, the opposition between faith and despair. But while Kierkegaard’s attention is focused on the act of gaining faith through the irrational leap, Percy is more attracted to the idea of a path that helps the character to move from one spiritual level of existence to another as a result of reflection and deliberate moral choice. This fact demonstrates the affinity between Percy’s and Marcel’s philosophical views. Percy also shares Marcel’s belief that the discovery of God cannot take place prior to the acknowledgement of a human person’s significance. Unlike Kierkegaard, the knight of faith in Percy’s and Marcel’s writings gains both the inner peace of mind and the ability to interact with the outside world quite successfully. The research demonstrates that while Kierkegaard’s ideas largely determine the initial situation in the novel, Marcel’s views eventually turn out to be dominant in Percy’s literary creation.