106 pages • 3 hours read
John Kennedy TooleA Confederacy of Dunces
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Ignatius J. Reilly studies the crowd at the D. H. Holmes department store, searching for “signs of bad taste in dress” while he waits for his mother (6). She is late returning from her visit to the doctor’s, and he is becoming uncomfortable. As he ponders a broken arcade game, a police officer approaches and demands to see identification. Ignatius replies angrily and strikes the policeman with his recently purchased sheet music. Mrs. Reilly, Ignatius’s mother, talks to a salesperson in the bakery about her travails. The policeman wants to take Ignatius to the precinct; an old man in the crowd accuses him of being a “communiss” (9). Mrs. Reilly breaks up the fracas. Ignatius is 30 years old, unemployed, and working on a “lengthy indictment against our century,” pausing only to make cheese dips (10). Ignatius and his mother slip away from the chaotic crowd. They slip into a bar on the way home and order two beers, though Ignatius warns that he “may not drink it” amid the threat of an imminent police raid (13). He recounts a familiar story of a doomed bus ride to Baton Rouge.
The old man from the department store sits on a bench in the police station. As he examines his various membership cards, Jones, a “young black man, eyeless behind space-age sunglasses,” talks to him about being arrested (16). The old man is summoned to the desk and gives his name as Claude Robichaux. He denies ever intending to say that “all policemen are communiss;” the policeman, Mancuso, recounts approaching Ignatius, who looked like “a great big pervert” (18). The sergeant lambasts Mancuso for trying to arrest “somebody away from his mother” and tells him to take Robichaux away.
As night falls, Ignatius and his mother are still at the bar, the Night of Joy. She suggests they leave, and he insists that they “stay to watch the corruption” (19). He bickers with an elegantly dressed young man named Dorian Greene and accuses his mother of “encouraging these preposterous people” (20). A woman named Darlene listens to him tell the story about the bus to Baton Rouge for the fifth time. Dorian buys Mrs. Reilly’s hat for $15 and, after he leaves, she knocks a beer bottle to the floor. It smashes. She shares her bakery cakes with everyone in the bar as Ignatius bores a woman named Darlene. Mrs. Reilly suggests that Ignatius “treats me bad sometimes,” and he accuses her of being drunk (23). She sobs, bemoaning Ignatius’s sedentary lifestyle. The owner of the bar returns and orders the barman to throw the Reillys out. Ignatius hurries his mother out, suggesting that the owner “looks like a Nazi commandant” (24). They drunkenly stumble to their car, bemoaning the “terrible woman” who threw them out (25).
As Mrs. Reilly tries to steer the old Plymouth, Ignatius frets about his nerves. The car parked behind them is “effectively demolished” and, when they finally pull out of the spot, Mrs. Reilly crashes into a “post supporting a wrought-iron balcony” (26). Screaming, fearful for his digestion, Ignatius recommends that they drive away. As the car backs slowly out, the entire balcony collapses. Ignatius can only make “a gagging sound” (27). He vomits. Officer Mancuso is walking past, wearing a purposefully absurd outfit of “ballet tights and a yellow sweater” to better catch the insane. He spots Ignatius in his “green hunting cap emitting vomit among the ruins” (28).
Chapter 2 Summary
Ignatius writes in his history book and reflects on a “very productive morning” (29). He examines his bloated stomach, wondering whether this buildup of gas is an ominous warning. When he belches, his mother calls through the door and warns him that Mancuso is due to arrive to discuss the accident. Screaming for his mother to leave him alone, Ignatius thinks about masturbating and recalls a memory of his long-dead collie.
Jones responds to a job listing at the Night of Joy. Lana, the owner, entertains the idea of hiring “a colored guy who would get arrested for vagrancy if he didn’t work” and feels good (32). Jones accepts a reduced wage of $20 a week to “keep my ass away from a po-lice for a few hour” (32). Darlene arrives late after taking her cockatoo to the vet. Lana tells Darlene off for encouraging Ignatius and his mother the day before. Lana leaves Jones and Darlene to clean the bar. Darlene’s job is to encourage people to drink more, and she bemoans the watered-down drinks. They clean the bar.
Mancuso rides a motorcycle wearing “only a T-shirt and Bermuda shorts [and] a long red beard that hooked over his ears by means of wires” (35). He is heading to see “that poor Widow Reilly” (35); her tears after the crash made him pity her. The Reillys live in the “tiniest structure on the block” (35). He approaches the ramshackle home, passing the dog’s grave and the beaten-up Plymouth; the neighbors watch him with interest. When his knocking elicits no response, a neighbor tells him to try the back. Mrs. Reilly is hanging yellows sheets in the back yard and she invites Mancuso into the house. She pours them coffee while Ignatius watches television in another room. Ignatius shouts at the television while Mancuso explains that the owner of the balcony wants an immediate settlement of $1,020.
Ignatius enters and they discuss the impossibly high fee, though Ignatius hates discussing such matters as they increase his “anxiety” (40). He labels the mortgage company “usurers” and returns to his television to avoid one of Mrs. Reilly’s “hysterical scenes” (40). She weeps, complaining to Mancuso that Ignatius no longer loves her. They discuss their families. Mancuso bowls to take his mind off his troubles. He offers to take Mrs. Reilly. Ignatius returns, complaining that the coffee tastes “brackish” (42). He reminds her that he is due at the cinema “promptly at seven” and advises her to prepare dinner (43). Ignatius tells Mancuso to leave, as he is “inciting my mother” (43). The policeman departs as Mrs. Reilly threatens to sell the house to pay her bill. Ignatius returns to his history writing. When his mother knocks at his door, he accuses her of being “momentarily deranged” (44). Eventually, he allows her inside. She complains about the lack of light and the smell and tells Ignatius that he must find a job. He deems this “inconceivable” and labels Mancuso the family’s “nemesis” (46). He reveals his trouble at finding employment, even in academic circles. However, he sees “no alternative” and agrees to get a job (49).
Jones rides the bus, thinking about the “fat cat in the green cap who was suddenly all over town” (50). Out the window, he sees a man with a rolled-up newspaper “striking another man who had a long red beard and […] Bermuda shorts” (50). He examines the pictures of successful men in a copy of Life magazine.
Ignatius settles down to watch a film in the cinema. He bursts an empty bag of popcorn and scares the children in the front row. As Ignatius talks over the screening, the cinema employees recognize him as a frequent nuisance. Eventually, the manager is forced to intervene.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The novel begins by introducing Ignatius J. Reilly. Rather than a name, speech, or physical description, the opening line describes the “green hunting cap” that squeezes the top of “the fleshy balloon of a head” (6). This hunting cap exists in its own right; the prose makes no attempt to denote possession or ownership. Rather, the focus is drawn immediately to the ridiculous nature of the hat and the way it barely sits on the head of the unidentified character. The hat is the subject, not Ignatius. By opening in such a manner, the true absurdity of Ignatius’s character is slowly revealed to the reader. It is a small hint at what is to come, using the objective correlative and the implications of the ridiculous garment to suggest to the reader the true nature of the man beneath the hat. When Ignatius is introduced by name, he is said to be “studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress” (6). This action, coupled with the description of his hat and moustache, reveals Ignatius’s scathing, narcissistic, and pompous nature, as well as his total lack of self-awareness.
In addition to introducing Ignatius and the other characters, the opening chapters also introduce the unique New Orleans accent as it is portrayed in the novel. From Robichaux speaking constantly of the “communiss” threat to Jones’s freewheeling dialect, the accent is written as it is spoken. This means that syllables, sounds, and even whole worlds are deliberately excluded from the speech. The novel is hyper-local; the characters speak in dialect while the omniscient narration is uninflected. As if to reinforce the “local” nature of the text, Ignatius’s story about leaving the city is repeated as a warning: Everything must be contained within the city, and leaving is a threat. This creates the sense that New Orleans in this period is a self-contained world, a cauldron in which the lives of such bizarre characters can bubble over and affect one another. Between the dialogue, the descriptions of the city, the characters, and their stories, there is the perpetual sense that this world of New Orleans is almost unreal. It is a fictive world of heightened realities that may or may not resemble the true New Orleans.
