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 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Darlene waters down the liquor at the Night of Joy. Lana discusses the trouble in the city and the local cops. Darlene wants to dance, but Lana tells her to “shut up” (94). Next, Darlene suggests that they use her cockatoo to drum up business. George the orphan enters, and Lana leads him to a private spot. She tells George to bring his packages when Jones is out to lunch, as she suspects he is talking to the police. Inside, Lana agrees to “audition the bird” (96).
Mr. Gonzalez smokes a cigarette and reflects on his good fortune at having hired Ignatius. The filing seems to have disappeared, there is little friction in the office, and the only drawback is the “constant conversation about the valve” (96). Trixie arrives still wearing her nightgown and robe, so Gonzalez sends her home. An hour later, Ignatius thrusts open the door and they discuss Trixie. Ignatius believes that she may have been in the right. Ignatius begins to paint a decorative cross while Gonzalez works; an hour later, Trixie still has not returned. When she does arrive, she seems confused, and the conversation devolves into an argument. Ignatius finishes his cross, throws away the stacks of filing, and then decides to visit the factory.
Mancuso recalls his efforts to arrest “someone, anyone,” which had ended with him being attacked by three women (101). As punishment for his bad tip about Night of Joy, Mancuso must stay in the bus station restroom until he brings someone in. He must dress as a farmer while doing so.
Ignatius tries to write while listening to his mother prepare to leave the house. As she says goodbye, he criticizes Mancuso and Santa. A car horn in the street summons Mrs. Reilly and, as she leaves, Ignatius throws an empty roof bottle at the waiting Mancuso and Santa. Then he returns to his writing. He views Gonzalez as the only hindrance left in the office keeping both Ignatius and Trixie from a “peaceful and content” life (105). He describes his visit to the factory, likening himself “to Kurtz from Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness” (107). Though he is impressed by some workers, his opinion of Mr. Palermo, the foreman, is not good. Somewhat bemused by the African American workers’ desire to “become active members of the American middle class,” Ignatius imagines himself as a leading commander in a class war and wonders if his life would be better were he a member of their race (109).
Next, Ignatius relates the story of how he met Myrna in a university cafeteria. Myrna was a radical student living on her father’s money, and Ignatius became “a project of sorts” for her until she disappeared from his life (112). Finally, he resolves to “step boldly into society […] with great style and zest;” he aims to “topple Mr. Gonzalez as a power within Levy Pants” (113).
At Tulane University, Dr. Talc hurriedly prepares for a lecture that he must give the next day. He finds himself “unable to remember absolutely anything about Lear and Arthur” (114). Buried beneath his notes is a letter from Ignatius, signed “ZORRO” (115), in which Ignatius insults and threatens Talc, the “deluded fool” (115).
Chapter 6 Summary
Like every building in Carrollton, Mattie’s Ramble Inn is “low, unpainted, imperfectly vertical” (116). It is a “combination bar and grocery” owned by Mr. Watson (116). Jones and Mr. Watson discuss job opportunities. Jones has his suspicions about George and the orphans. Mr. Watson suggests that Jones try “a little sabotage” and a man overhears them, noting that he and the other workers at the Levy Pant factory are planning a “big sabotage” inspired by Ignatius (118). When Jones hears the description of the “big and fat” man who “got him a huntin cap he be wearing all the time,” his eyes widen (119). He warns the man to be careful.
Gonzalez arrives to work early, as usual. In his short stint at the company, Ignatius has decorated the office with crepe paper and religious paraphernalia. Ignatius arrives earlier than usual, acting defensively, and then heads to the factory. Gonzalez spots “four of the male factory workers […] embracing Ignatius around the Smithfield hams that were his thighs” and lifting him onto a table (120). Ignatius addresses the crowd of workers about his plan to “storm the office” (121). He unfurls a stained bedsheet on which he has written “FORWARD” and “Crusade for Moorish Dignity,” filming the scene in front of him (122). The protest leaves before Ignatius can clamber down from the table. He drops and breaks the camera while getting off the table and then runs to catch up. When Gonzalez is flabbergasted, Ignatius orders the crowd to attack, but it crumbles into nothing and the workers return to the factory, much to Ignatius’s fury. The entire ordeal results in Ignatius getting fired.
After eight hours in the restroom, Mancuso has arrested no one. Attempting to leave, he finds that the door to the “chilly and damp” booth appears to be shut (128). He calls for help.
Mrs. Reilly rails against Ignatius for getting fired. She insists that he get another job. Ignatius bemoans that “Fortuna has decided upon another downward spin” (129).
As Mrs. Levy uses a motorized exercise board, Mr. Levy complains of a headache after a day spent “trying to save that business” (130). He recounts Ignatius’s misadventure and, when explaining that the workers wanted to be paid more, Mrs. Levy mentions that their daughters had said the same thing. Worried about what his wife will tell his daughters, Mr. Levy agrees to visit a therapist and to allow his wife to bring Trixie to the house.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
While the novel is ostensibly about the life and actions of one man, the travails of Ignatius J. Reilly are frequently caught up in the complexities of class politics. During the two chapters outlined above, various characters espouse their views and analyze how they are affected by the class system in 1960s New Orleans. There are two key ways in which these ideas manifest: the lived experience and the academic. Jones is a representation of the former, while Ignatius represents the latter.
For Burma Jones, class intersects with race. As he sits at the bar in Mattie’s Ramble Inn, he discusses the earning opportunities available to him as a black man in America. He describes his working conditions as a “poor color boy bustin his ass for twenny dollar a week” and remembers how his mother worked every day of her life for very little (117). Jones, who himself has worked from a young age, is equally stuck in a dead-end position. The solution he settles on is sabotage, undermining the Night of Joy from the inside. If he quits, he gets arrested for vagrancy, so this is one of the few avenues of power open to him. The realities of Jones’s economic situation are very apparent to him, even if they are not to the other characters. While Jones recognizes Darlene as being similarly oppressed by the economic system, she does not possess his understanding or desire to change the situation. As such, Jones is one of the key analysts of New Orleans’s class system, even if he is powerless to dismantle it.
Ignatius approaches the problem as an academic outsider. As a perpetually unemployed layabout with a great deal of schooling, he has been equipped with the vocabulary and the understanding of class-based economics but has rarely had to operate in such a system. He has remained deliberately outside for so long that when he takes his first job at Levy Pants, he immediately sets his sights on conducting a small-scale class-based uprising, leading the factory workers to the head office. While Ignatius says all the right words and can analyze the class system effectively—the owner is absent, the management is incompetent, and the workers are exploited—he lacks the real-world experience to affect any meaningful change. His uprising fails because he lacks empathy and fails to convey his goals to either the workers or the management. Instead, class-based economics self-perpetuate, unaffected by the academic explanations which lack real-world consequences or effects.
While Jones’s solution (sabotage) allows him to keep his job, Ignatius’s solution leads to him being fired almost immediately. While Jones’s solution eventually leads to Lana being imprisoned, Ignatius’s actions ultimately result in Levy Pants enjoying a rejuvenation under a transformed Mr. Levy. Thus, the novel provides a commentary on how class-based economics can be changed, suggesting that lived experiences and knowledge continually trump academic and theoretical languages and praxis.
