The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Analysis

Doctor Copeland and Jake Blount are as we have seen doomed to isolation because of defects in their own character. Biff Brannon’s situation is less desperate than that of the other main characters because he has achieved a sort of adjustment: the mechanical relationship which in his role of restaurant proprietor, he enjoys with them alleviates somewhat his sense of loneliness. Even though the place loses money, he continues to maintain it: ‘The business was losing money. There were many slack hours. Still at meal-time the place was full and he saw many hundreds of acquaintances as he stood guard behind the café counter,’ Biff, Jake, Mick,

Dr. Copeland and the others do not talk only about loneliness and alienation. No fewer than six

The fact that it is a first novel makes it, of course all the more extraordinary. Any reader who wishes to determine the characteristic strengths and limitations of Carson

McCullers as a writer could do no better than to begin with The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Not only is this first novel an admirably complete introduction to her themes and subject matter, but it raises in a complex and provocative way the major critical issues posed by all her important work. The scene is the Deep South the characters are estranged and disadvantaged and the theme is loneliness and the inevitable frustrations of love. When the book opens, John Singer and

Spiro’s Antonopoulos two deaf-mutes, have been joined for ten years in a close but enigmatic friendship. The active and quick witted Singer has been entirely infatuated with his impassive and feebleminded friend. Although most of the other people in this depressed factory town are isolated the two mutes never seem lonely at all. Singer gives, his friend receives, and each seems absorbed in his role as lover and

For Jake Blount a haggard radical agitator with a greater gift for talk than action,

Singer is divine because he listens. For Biff Brannon the café owner who self consciously observes the human pageant, Singer is a fit subject for contemplation because of the attention paid to him by others. None of these dreamers know of Singer’s love for Antonopoulos nor are they aware of the bewilderment with which he observes their interest in him. When

Antonopoulos dies, Singer commits suicide and the disciples are left to ponder and to grieve. From the opening pages of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter one is aware that this strange and absorbing story is designed to read both as a realistic tale of a half-dozen displaced southerners and as a generalized parable on the nature of human illusion and love. And at the start at least, each level operates satisfactorily with the other. All the carefully observed details needed to authenticate the mutes are present. Antonopoulos fat and slovenly works in a fruit store; Singer tall and immaculately dressed, engraves silver for a local jeweler. Their routine