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 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Ignatius visits the headquarters of Paradise Vendors, Incorporated, a company that deploys hot-dog-shaped food carts across New Orleans. He eats a hot dog while lambasting Mr. Clyde, the owner, for whistling a “discordant abomination” (136). Four hot dogs later, Ignatius reveals that he cannot pay and is forced to take a job as a vendor to clear his debt. Ignatius parks the cart and begins to eat the hot dogs without selling any. George approaches and asks for a hot dog, but Ignatius refuses. They argue and George slouches away; Ignatius calls for someone to “grab that juvenile delinquent” (143). A crowd circles Ignatius and he eats another hot dog to calm down. By the time he circles back around to Paradise Vendors, he has four hot dogs left and tells Mr. Clyde that he was robbed by “a member of the vast teen-age underground” (144). Reluctantly, Mr. Clyde believes Ignatius and offers him a job. Ignatius accepts, as the “work offered little supervision and harassment” (145).
Jones has made an “attempt at some subtle sabotage” by cleaning the bar floor poorly (146). When Lana complains, Jones says that “for twenny dollar a week, you gotta expec a little crap” (146). Lana thinks about her “project,” for which she needs chalk, a book, and a globe (147). Darlene enters with her cockatoo; Lana informs her that she is to resume her previous role in the bar. Jones intervenes and convinces Lana that Darlene’s stripping act will attract customers, though he actually believes it will help sabotage the bar further.
Mrs. Reilly calls Santa, worried that Ignatius has taken such a menial job. They discuss Mancuso’s continuing struggle to be respected in the police force and the man who has shown interest in Mrs. Reilly, as well as various scraps of family history. Ignatius has been in the bath for hours, affected negatively by “the trauma of having found employment” (154). He waits until he is sufficiently calm to open a letter from Myrna. He reads but is interrupted by his mother. When she leaves him alone, he reads about a lecture Myrna is set to give. She ends the letter by imploring Ignatius to get out of the house more. Exiting the bath, Ignatius pens a response. He mocks her lecture and advises her to cancel it.
Chapter 8 Summary
Trixie has been invited to the Levy house so that Mrs. Levy can make use of her “psychology correspondence course” (162). Mr. Levy tries to dissuade his wife, but Mrs. Levy insists and tells Trixie that her tiredness is all in her mind. Stirring, Trixie lambasts Mr. Levy for firing Ignatius, who she incorrectly refers to as Gloria. Though Trixie wants to return to the office, Mrs. Levy shoves her down onto the couch and refuses to let her leave.
Mancuso’s cold is worsening. He has still caught nobody in the bus station restroom. The Boethius book given to him by Ignatius is a difficult read. Through a crack in the door, he spies George again and approaches him. As he tries to place George under arrest, the orphan steals the book and uses it to hit Mancuso. George flees with the book, stopping in the bus terminal waiting room to grab his “brown-paper packages,” and laments that he has to carry “the stuff” around for two hours before meeting Lana (167).
Santa Battaglia prepares her home for a party. Mrs. Reilly arrives with Mancuso, whose cold has worsened even further. They agree to keep Ignatius’s stolen book a secret. Mrs. Reilly complains about Ignatius’s recent behavior, and Santa assures her that she will have a “nice time” (170). A man has been invited who may be interested in Mrs. Reilly, but he is running late. Mrs. Reilly confesses that she is nervous, and then there is a knock at the door. Santa welcomes in the man, Mr. Robichaux. He recalls meeting Mrs. Reilly when Mancuso tried to arrest her son. Santa and Mrs. Reilly worry about how Robichaux will react to seeing Mancuso again. Mrs. Reilly and Robichaux sit in awkward silence; after talking about Ignatius, she breaks down in tears. Robichaux suggests that Ignatius might be a “communiss,” and Mrs. Reilly agrees to ask her son about it (177). When Mancuso enters, Robichaux leaps to his feet and points at the “dirty cop” (178). They calm Robichaux down, and Mancuso apologizes. They all agree that it was Ignatius’s fault. The party continues.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
The interconnected nature of life in New Orleans is apparent throughout the book. Frequently, minor characters and incidents which are given a sentence or two in an earlier chapter will reappear as important and noteworthy events. For instance, the hot dog vendor whom Ignatius dismisses in the opening chapter eventually becomes an avenue of employment. Likewise, the old man arrested in the opening chapter for calling Mancuso a “communiss” becomes Mrs. Reilly love interest and one of the main threats to Ignatius’s status quo. This portrays the location as a feverish, tight-knit community in which everyone and everything influences the entire locale.
Mancuso is one of the most absurd and pathetic characters in the book, though he garners a great deal of sympathy. Forced to occupy the bus station restrooms, and forced to wear a series of ridiculous disguises, he develops a comical speech impediment, and few characters take him seriously. He is given one task: to apprehend any kind of criminal. In the chapters above, he comes dangerously close, almost arresting George and blowing open Lana’s pornography ring early on. However, he fails once again. Not only does he fail to apprehend George, but he is assaulted with the heavy book, which was lent to him by Ignatius. His objective remains incomplete, and now he has a greater issue: What is he to do about losing one of Ignatius’s prized possessions? Like many aspects of the novel, this minor incident will eventually become a major plot point, and the loss of the novel will eventually lead to the arrest of Lana and the other members of the pornography ring. Once again, the seeds of the novel’s climax are sewn early in the text in a seemingly irrelevant manner.
Another example of this is Trixie’s general confused state. As she is taken into the Levy home so that Mrs. Levy can practice the psychological techniques she learned in a correspondence course, she reveals herself to be perpetually disorganized and unaware of the state of the world. Her talk of “socks and luncheon meat” (164) might seem to be absurd comments played for comic effect, but this confused state of mind will prove pivotal in dismissing the lawsuit that Ignatius has set into motion. Similarly, the fact that Trixie cannot remember Ignatius’s name and refers to him constantly as Gloria will provide a layer of concealment for many of Ignatius’s actions at Levy Pants and will allow him to escape unpunished when the novel reaches its end. While Mrs. Levy pities the “neglected creature” (164) that is Trixie, Trixie plays an important role in the resolution of many plot points. Furthermore, her anger and resentment at being treated poorly by the Levys will lead her to accept Mr. Levy’s proposed solution. Once again, seemingly minor asides, plot points, and jokes become more and more important as the novel progresses, imbuing the text’s structure with an added significance.
