A Confederacy of Dunces: Chapter 2, Part 3 Summary & Analysis

Patrolman Mancuso is a mild-mannered and sensitive person, although in his professional role he is meant to be an intimidating authority figure. However, to be a good undercover officer, Mancuso must learn to essentially lose himself by putting his own personality aside and slipping into a professional, inconspicuous role that people will be fooled by.

The neighbors keep Ignatius and Irene’s house constantly under surveillance. Although American society reveres individual expression, this passage shows that it is also deeply concerned with conformity— people are suspicious of those who do not fit in. As one cannot really be free to express oneself under these conditions, society’s obsession with freedom is painted here as hypocritical and ironic.

Ignatius has a complicated love/hate relationship with television. He despises it as a symbol of modernity and views it as a corrosive force in the world. At the same time, however, he enjoys and is drawn to it. This suggests that Ignatius’s most basic urges often diverge from his belief that he should remain morally pure and uncorrupted by modernity, which he views as vulgar and shallow.

Ignatius is suspicious of Patrolman Mancuso because Mancuso symbolizes authority and the enforcement of conventional modern values—thing with which Ignatius feels at odds. Ignatius is extremely selfish—although he is quite happy to live off his mother, he is not prepared to help her. In this sense, Ignatius is hypocritical and does not take responsibility for his role in causing the car crash. He generally does not feel responsible for incidents in his own life because he believes that a medieval goddess named Fortuna controls his fate, and thus any change in his behavior will prove futile.

Irene, like many of the other characters in the novel, faces the idea that her freedom may be taken away and that she may go to prison. Her reaction supports the idea that losing one’s freedom is a significant personal blow since it is an important aspect of human life, although one that is difficult to protect or ensure in most societies. The threat of imprisonment runs through the novel and is overlaid by the fact that Ignatius’s favorite scholar, Boethius (who wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, which Ignatius uses as a life manual) wrote this tract while in prison.

It is ironic that Ignatius expects Irene to take his whims seriously, especially when it involves something trivial and childish, like the cinema cartoon. His hypocrisy is shown again as he, in turn, does not take Irene seriously when she has legitimate problem, like the fine.

Ignatius justifies his consumption of media to himself because he pretends that it is research for his tract about the evils of modernity. However, really, it is likely that Ignatius simply enjoys modern pleasures like television, but cannot admit this to himself because it would damage his idea of himself as superior to modernity. Irene cannot see the value in Ignatius’s academic work, and this supports the idea that Ignatius sees himself as someone who is unappreciated and misunderstood in his own time.

Ignatius belittles Patrolman Mancuso’s belief in productivity because it is a modern idea. Ignatius feels that modernity is anti-spiritual because, rather than address problems religiously or philosophically, modern people tends to address them physically or through things like productivity or material accumulation. Ignatius’s medieval worldview, based on the belief that the goddess Fortuna controls one’s fate, is the opposite of this and holds that productivity is pointless because one can never change the outcome of destiny.

As a medievalist, Ignatius has a different view of productivity to a modern person. Medieval societies tended to be feudal, meaning the ruling class kept most of what peasants made. However, modern society allows individuals to accumulate indefinitely and tends to view productivity only in terms of this material accumulation. Ignatius therefore feels that his intellectual and spiritual productivity are undervalued. It is, of course, partly ironic that Ignatius considers himself productive because he works rarely and in very short bursts.

Ignatius has likely faced rejection and alienation as a result of his inability to fit into conventional society. This possibly explains his reluctance to engage with the outside world and suggests that his mask of superiority is a disguise he adopts to hide his feelings of inferiority and shame. Ignatius also suffers from feelings of persecution which suggests that he is highly sensitive to what others think of him.

Ignatius does not attribute his need to find a job to his literal circumstances, believing instead that it is the work of the medieval goddess Fortuna, whom he worships. Therefore, in his mind, employment is something he has no power over and cannot rectify with changes in his behavior. Ignatius also blames Irene for this, which further shows his struggle to accept responsibility for his actions and his need to justify his bad behavior to himself. Irene wishes that Ignatius could lead a conventional, American life, which shows that she does not accept Ignatius for who he is and is concerned about how others view her family.