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Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section
- From: Doug Brown <wply1223 AT gmail.com>
- To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section
- Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2026 13:29:35 -0400
1. As a writer (albeit not a very good one) I noticed Percy's opening structure this time. He seems to start in media res (in the middle of the action), but that is a trick of sorts, as absolutely no action happens in this first section. Instead, he introduces us to this pre-apocalyptic near future using circles within circles….
Rhonda…I’ve always thought of Percy’s starting in medias res as a dramatic structure to draw the reader into the story, a popular device in movies and TV shows. Starting the Slow Read, I also noticed a structural feature that had never caught my eye—his 3-part lists of elements in the story, including the geography, the Catholic Church, and the women in the motel. Having read “Ruins” many times since it first arrived, along with so much of Percy’s non-fiction and related scholarship, it’s hard not to think of his existential concepts, especially the little I know about Kierkegaard.
(Footnote: concentrating on philosophy tends to distract from other things I love about his writing--the joy, his humor, his lyrical description--but it’s useful for “analysis.” Like Binx Bolling, Dr. More sees the world [those “circles within circles”] in existential terms.)
Kierkegaard writes about three stages of life: the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious, and it occurred to me those might function as categories for those “circles.”
The aesthetic stage, with emphasis on pleasure, avoiding ennui, etc., might describe Paradise Estates (and the swamp dwellings), the new Dutch Catholic Church (created partly to advance marital pleasure), and the “girl” in 204.
Kierkegaard’s ethical stage, with a focus on abiding by rules and societal norms might be a way of characterizing “Fedville,” the new American Catholic Church and the musical Lola in Room 205.
While it’s likely nothing and no one has fully achieved the religious stage of spirituality through a “leap of faith,” the closest examples may be the remaining traditional Church with its fire-watching Priest, and possibly Ellen, the woman in 203, who is a steady companion in More’s chaotic life.
I realize putting all these “circles” in these rather allegorical terms oversimplifies things a bit, but I think it is somewhat useful to organize them in an existential framework.
2. This opening structure brings to mind the first lines of W.B. Yeats', "The Second Coming……This is but one of his allusions, which pepper the opening pages in a way that would make T.S. Eliot proud*. ….
I like your describing Percy’s allusions like “pepper” in the opening “that would make T.S. Eliot proud.” They pepper the rest of the book as well. Yeats’ poem, with its “rough beast” and apocalyptic imagery reminds me of a more-violent novel that Percy highly admired, “A Canticle for Leibowitz.” But unlike that book, “Love in the Ruins” doesn’t dramatize the future as a dark world of mass destruction. Perhaps another allusion suggests why Percy chose a lighter approach, where Dr. More tells us, “So it goes” (p. 17), the refrain repeated throughout Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five.” In a 1979 letter to his best pal Shelby Foote, Percy criticizes William Styron’s graphic approach to Holocaust horror, promoting a more subtle approach:
The only novelist I know to get hold of one of our little horrors of the 20th C—in this case the bombing of Dresden—was Vonnegut, and he knew the only way you can write about such a thing is not to write about it—to write about the calves of the British prisoners “big as cannonballs” and outer space.
I believe what this reveals about Tom is that he finds “the catastrophe,” the mysterious serial killings (“work of a madman”), and the imminent race war are less concerning for humankind than existential despair, alienation, ennui, anxiety…those conditions that force us to separate from “the lovely ordinary world,” “abstracting the self from itself.”
3. Percy sets this novel in 1983….Do Tom's descriptions of the decay seem "true" at this point, or is there reason to question his perspective?
My emotional reaction to “Love in the Ruins” has changed through the years. I originally loved the joy and humor of the book as it introduced me to a new way of seeing the world. Years later, after I’d gone through some dark patches, I focused on the more depressing, tragic elements in the story. Still later, I turned back to the lighter side, and my only complaint was that its politics had seemed dated.
But NOW? I’m shocked at how relevant it is. Well, times have changed. The split between the right and left, which the silly names Knotheads and Leftpapas connoted something playful at the time, has now become almost death-dealing in a country more drastically divided since the Civil War. Even a few of Dr. More’s random observations are more relevant now than they were a few years ago: people have stopped going to the movies (p. 37); despite impending doom, the gross national product is healthy (p. 18), and an unpopular war is being waged--in South America, rather than today’s Iran (p. 19).
I don’t question Dr. More’s perspective, since I believe our political condition has caught up to his observations, and his existential view of reality is infallible.
4. Why are the stories of the four patients included? What is revealed about Tom? About society?
The four patients somewhat reveal the limits of Kierkegaard’s first two stages of existence. (Sorry to bring up the great Dane again). P.T. Bledsoe is a victim of his racist ideas, which is a pitfall of the ethical stage that holds people to perceived “norms.” The denizens of the swamp have shirked responsibility for pleasurable pursuits, as in the aesthetic stage. Ted Tennis has become focused on the erotic—a pitfall of the aesthetic stage—he is so alienated from the physical world he has become impotent.
What is revealed about Tom is his existential perspective…and his confession that he is a “fornicator”!
5. As a final thought, any thoughts about aspects of society that seem unchanged despite the radical changes in religion (Catholicism particularly) and politics?
Honestly, to me, the main thing that has remained unchanged is humanity’s existential condition--the ennui, the anxiety, the alienation, abstraction—the despair that Percy’s works have warned us about.
Thanks for listening! 🙂
-Leonard
On Sun, Jun 7, 2026 at 10:47 AM Doug Brown <wply1223 AT gmail.com> wrote:Hi Rhonda and gang! Glad to be a part of the discussion again this year.
It has been a few years since I last read Love in the Ruins. I have to say that I was struck by how biting the satire is in this opening section. If I remember correctly, this sort of thing tones down a bit as the plot progresses.
So Rhonda’s comments and questions seem important. If we are starting in media res, why does so little actually happen and what is Percy trying to establish here?
My first thought is that we are not reading Percy’s views here. Instead, we are being shown Tom More’s state of mind. And what is that state of mind?
Dude’s kind of bonkers. He sees everyone around him as acting nuts, but the impression I’m left with is that Tom is the one who might be nuts.
There is one mitigating point, though. Rhonda mentions the concentric circles of Tom’s critique of the world. His harshest criticisms are when he’s talking about the widest circles of people. He flirts with being downright spiteful when he talks of groups of people. But as the circles become tighter and tighter, as he talks about his neighbors and then specific people in his life, he becomes kinder and more compassionate.
This is something that Percy does in a lot of his writing. The more abstract something is, the more distasteful it is, and the more likely it is to provoke a negative response. In Percy’s world, anger is a form of abstraction. Compassion is specific. And that flows both ways: the individual who struggles to live his or her life evokes compassion, and compassion is more easily directed to the individual than to a group.
This bears out in this opening section, best shown in the four patient case studies. And we’ll see more of this sort of thing later in the novel. (Keep an eye out for Father Smith.)
I agree with Rhonda that this opening section is loaded with allusions. It’s possible that Percy is even making an allusion to his own book, The Moviegoer. In that earlier novel, the narrator questions his own bewilderment about the world. Binx asks himself if he is the only person who sees that things are bizarre, or is everyone else right that things are fine and he’s the only person who is confused.
Tom More asks much the same question of himself. Are vines really sprouting along the streets and buildings? Is the world really about to end?
On page 31 (of my old edition), Tom uses the phrase "principalities and powers are nearly everywhere victorious.” It’s another allusion, in this case to a phrase often used by Paul in his letters in the New Testament. But the point here seems, to me at least, to be that Tom sees the various ailments of modern society not as the simplistic divisions he ridicules, but rather as manifestations of some greater spiritual battle.
It’s not really about left or right, black or white, vines or no vines, angelism or bestialism. It’s about something greater.
Is Tom right? Or is he just plain crazy?
Or…
Is Percy showing us a character in Tom More who is both brilliantly insightful and crazy as a road lizard on a hot day?
Even setting the novel around July Fourth is an allusion of sorts. Percy uses the central American holiday as an opportunity to critique American society.
We’ll still be doing this Slow Read as we hit the 250th Fourth of July. I think it’s worth keeping in mind what Percy and Tom seem to be saying here – that thinking of groups of people abstractly leads to anger, but seeing each person as a human being leads to compassion.
Thanks again, Rhonda, for getting us going!
Doug Brown
Asheville, NCOn Fri, Jun 5, 2026 at 7:20 PM RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com> wrote:Rhonda here, ready to take the wheel for our first section. But first, a note from our intrepid leader, Henry:Welcome, everyone, as we continue our journey through Percy’s novels with Love in the Ruins, following our earlier readings of MG and LG. All are welcome to join the discussion, whether you’re keeping up with the reading,or simply drop in along the way.Since Love in the Ruins satirizes political themes, let’s remember our group members hold a wide range of diverse view, but whatever our differences, we are all here this summer to enjoy and celebrate together Percy's many humorous questions and ideas in the novel.I’m excited for us to now turn to follow Tom More through his many (mis)adventures and quixotic, comical schemes. As with earlier readings, we should all feel free to compare any of the novels with each other. The following questions cover the first July 4section of the novel, including the patient record, and ending with Tom on the interstate at 7 pm the evening of July 4th.DISCUSSION TOPICS:
First, a little note: I considered many different gambits for opening this summer's discussion, but in the end, I thought, let's keep it simple. My questions are broad, and I'm hopeful that they might inspire some thoughts about the opening of the novel. However, I don't want to suggest that posts on this section have to restricted to answering these questions. After all, school is out. So, if you have other things on your mind, please share those thoughts.
As a writer (albeit not a very good one) I noticed Percy's opening structure this time. He seems to start in media res (in the middle of the action), but that is a trick of sorts, as absolutely no action happens in this first section. Instead, he introduces us to this pre-apocalyptic near future using circles within circles: the Western world, the USA, his community, his neighborhood, himself. What seems to be the key elements of each circle that he wants to establish before getting to the action of the story? You don't need to feel compelled to cover the whole catalog. As Percy told Charles Bunting, "It was supposed to be a serio-comic review of the state of the world" (Conversations 46).
This opening structure brings to mind the first lines of W.B. Yeats', "The Second Coming": "Turning and turning in the widening gyre, / the falcon cannot hear the falconer." Percy becomes more overt with the sentence, "The center did not hold," which follows Tom's descriptions of the politics of the time (page 16 of one of my editions and page 18 of the other), is a near echo of the poem's fifth line. This is but one of his allusions, which pepper the opening pages in a way that would make T.S. Eliot proud*. What do these add to the narrative and our understanding of Tom and his world view? I'm thinking responses can either consider the allusions as a whole or dive into any single allusion.
Percy sets this novel in 1983, roughly 12 years after its publication date (15 years after he did his last revisions, I conjecture, as he referenced 15 years in the future when talking to Bunting). It is a near future, but a tremendous decline seems to have occurred. Do Tom's descriptions of the decay seem "true" at this point, or is there reason to question his perspective?
Why are the stories of the four patients included? What is revealed about Tom? About society?
As a final thought, any thoughts about aspects of society that seem unchanged despite the radical changes in religion (Catholicism particularly) and politics?
Side note: the companion that explains all the allusions in Eliot's The Waste Land is massively longer than the poem itself. The poem is 434 lines, while Allyson Booth's line-by-line companion to it is 292 pages!
I hope everyone is enjoying Love in the Ruins!
Rhonda McDonnellMember of the Institute for Studies in PragmaticismTexas Tech University
"You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." ~Walker Percy~
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-
[percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section,
RHONDA MCDONNELL, 06/05/2026
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Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section,
Doug Brown, 06/07/2026
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Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section,
Leonard Hughes, 06/07/2026
- Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section, Doug Brown, 06/07/2026
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Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section,
Thomas Gollier, 06/07/2026
- Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section, janetcantor37 AT yahoo.com, 06/08/2026
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Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section,
Leonard Hughes, 06/07/2026
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Re: [percy-l] Love in the Ruins - Discussion questions for the first July 4 section,
Doug Brown, 06/07/2026
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