A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, is a novel that describes the adventures of Ignatius J. Reilly, a peculiar young man who lives in 1960’s New Orleans. To please his overbearing mother, Ignatius embarks on a seemingly everlasting quest to find a suitable job that he can sustain. Throughout the story, Ignatius exhibits many different characteristics while getting himself into sticky situations. Although he is a character of many qualities, Ignatius’s two main qualities are gluttony and eccentricity because they appear frequently throughout the novel and effect his personality wholly. Ignatius demonstrates his gluttonous tendencies throughout the entirety of the novel. Ignatius has a medical condition where his pyloric valve shuts
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His actions and ideas exhibited in the novel show his eccentricity quite well. In the beginning of the book, Ignatius shows his eccentricity when he decides to pleasure himself while dreaming about his late dog. Ignatius imagines how the dog “jumped over a fence and chased a stick that somehow landed in the middle of Ignatius’ quilt” (Toole 31). No normal person would ever masturbate to an imagination of his pet. This strange, vulgar act perfectly demonstrates Ignatius’s eccentric quality. Later in the novel, Ignatius’s past professor Dr. Talc finds the letter Ignatius had sent him a long time ago. In this letter, Ignatius rants on and on about the illegitimacy of Dr. Talc’s medieval history class. He calls Talc a “total ass” for his incompetence of British medieval history knowledge (Toole 128). Strangely, Ignatius does not sign the letter with his true name, but rather his chooses to hide behind his pen name of Zorro. Ignatius’s peculiarity is shown impeccably with his interaction with Dr. Talc because it shows his audacity to prank people by sending raging letters signed by odd names. In a later scene in the novel when Ignatius speaks with Dorian Greene in the French Quarter, he brings up a bizarre idea of what would happen if the government and militaries of the world were infiltrated by homosexuals. Ignatius even states that this secretive movement could …show more content…
Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces is one of the most studied and analyzed novel characters in New Orleans literature for good reason. His traits truly make him unique compared to other characters in other works of literature. The main reason whether readers enjoy this novel or not is if they like Ignatius’s gluttonous and eccentric personality, truly exhibiting his unique
His actions and ideas exhibited in the novel show his eccentricity quite well. In the beginning of the book, Ignatius shows his eccentricity when he decides to pleasure himself while dreaming about his late dog. Ignatius imagines how the dog “jumped over a fence and chased a stick that somehow landed in the middle of Ignatius’ quilt” (Toole 31). No normal person would ever masturbate to an imagination of his pet. This strange, vulgar act perfectly demonstrates Ignatius’s eccentric quality. Later in the novel, Ignatius’s past professor Dr. Talc finds the letter Ignatius had sent him a long time ago. In this letter, Ignatius rants on and on about the illegitimacy of Dr. Talc’s medieval history class. He calls Talc a “total ass” for his incompetence of British medieval history knowledge (Toole 128). Strangely, Ignatius does not sign the letter with his true name, but rather his chooses to hide behind his pen name of Zorro. Ignatius’s peculiarity is shown impeccably with his interaction with Dr. Talc because it shows his audacity to prank people by sending raging letters signed by odd names. In a later scene in the novel when Ignatius speaks with Dorian Greene in the French Quarter, he brings up a bizarre idea of what would happen if the government and militaries of the world were infiltrated by homosexuals. Ignatius even states that this secretive movement could …show more content…
Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces is one of the most studied and analyzed novel characters in New Orleans literature for good reason. His traits truly make him unique compared to other characters in other works of literature. The main reason whether readers enjoy this novel or not is if they like Ignatius’s gluttonous and eccentric personality, truly exhibiting his unique