To end the eternal Wednesday afternoon: The search for the foundations of human existence in “The Last Gentleman” by Walker Percy

Abstract

The article examines the philosophical issues in Walker Percy’s novel “The Last Gentleman”, revealed in the author’s modeling of the plot development and in creating character images with conscious reliance on the provisions of Kierkegaard’s and Marcel’s existentialist philosophy. The main problem in the book centers round the desire of a person to find his own way in a situation of existential choice, the search for faith as the significant basis for human existence. The protagonist, Will Barrett, is put by the author into the situation of absolute freedom and is presented with the choice of various conceptual models of life, personified in the images of the people surrounding him: his father’s stoic ethics, Rita’s secular humanism, Val’s uncompromising religious faith, Sutter’s desperate nihilism. The turning point in Will’s life comes with his falling in love with Kitty: it changes his way of thinking, laying the foundation for the subsequent discovery of God. The article discloses the symbolic meaning of the character’s way in the novel: from a crowded metropolis to the open wilderness of southwestern deserts, from feeling lost to the discovery of faith, from loneliness to the search for the significant Other. The dynamic movement becomes the most important element in the novel, the character’s actual travelling through the country acquires the features of a spiritual journey to truth. Despite the absence of Will’s crucial inner transformation at the end of the novel, the author, in accordance with Marcel’s philosophical concept, gives paramount importance to the journey itself, regarding it as the main event that gives meaning to human life.