The Moviegoer by Walter Percy is a fascinating depiction of a bizarre bird, Binx Bollings, a New Orleans stockbroker, who is driven by a quest. There are two types of searches that Binx deals with: a vertical search and a horizontal search. Through them, Binx strives to transcend “everydayness,” as well as existential despair, hopelessness, and malaise. He fears being content in life because he does not want to lose his individuality and become invisibly dead: a fear he ultimately accepts. In this article, I will argue that Binx Bollings abandons the vertical quest because the vertical quest is his descent into the underworld, similar to Dante's Inferno, and once he reaches the circle of Hell, he is stuck in an eternal horizontal existence, a difference in his pace. -brother, Lonnie, who truly transcends the everyday and ascends in the vertical pursuit due to grace. The research is first mentioned as something of a curiosity. As Binx recalls, I remembered the first time the quest came to mind. I recovered under a chindolea bush. For me everything is upside down, as I will explain later. What are generally considered the best times are the worst times for me, and that worst time was one of the best. My shoulder didn't hurt but it was pressed hard against the ground as if someone was sitting on me. Six inches from my nose a dung beetle scratched under the leaves. While I was looking at it, an immense curiosity awoke in me. I had understood something. I swore that if I ever got out of this situation, I would continue the search. Binx recognizes the possibility of another type of search, horizontal search, which consumes most of its actions. While vertical research is scientific, materialistic, mathematical, disinterested, objective, universal,……middle of paper……usefulness of coming into the world? Or is it because he believes that God himself is present here on the corner of the Champs Elysees and Bons Enfants? Or is he here for both reasons: by some dark and dazzling trick of grace, coming for the one and receiving the other as an importunate bonus from God? Impossible to say. Finally, when Lonnie dies, Binx's half-brother, who is a devout Catholic, says, "I have overcome the habitual character." Lonnie overcame the habitual disposition of hopeless everyday life, of living a life in the static, dead existence of sin, living in the grace of God. A grace that Binx denied, thus forcing himself to live in the hellish quest, bound to desperation. Works Cited Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy I: Hell, trans. Dorothy Sayers. New York: Penguin Books, 1949Walker Percy, The Moviegoer. New York: Vintage International, 1988