Heart Is a Lonely Hunger

Heart is a Lonely Hunger

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Isolation in small-town life

Carson McCullers' the Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a poignant illustration of missed connections and the inability to communicate in a small Southern town. Set during the Great Depression, McCullers' characters are unable to extricate themselves from their plights of isolation -- economically, socially, and physically. This final, physical element cannot be underestimated in evaluating McCullers' novel, because over and over again, the physical body is used as a metaphor for the spiritual state of the individual.

This is seen most strikingly in the persona of the main character John Singer. Although, to call Singer a 'main character' may be somewhat of a misnomer, given that Singer is a deaf-mute who remains largely impenetrable to the reader and to the other residents of the town. Singer functions as a uniting figure, a bridge between the disparate persons of the novel, like the lonely adolescent girl Mick Kelley who smothers her dreams to become a concert pianist by taking a job at Woolworth's to support her family, or the drunken radical Jake Blount who uses Singer as a kind of father confessor. Looking at Singer, these people feel that he is listening to them, and understands their deepest motives: when Mick is thinking about leaving high school, she uses Singer as a kind of oracle, and asks him if he is doing the right thing.

However, Singer's real feelings are not understood -- the person he most profoundly identifies with is the insane Spiros Antonapoulos, a fellow deaf-mute. Singer kills himself after Antonapoulos dies in an institution, which seems to suggest that ultimately only 'like' can, understand 'like.' Singer's deafness is a metaphor for humanity in general and people's inability to understand one another but the reality of his physical deafness also makes the lack of connection others feel much sharper for him, as he cannot even attempt to put his real feelings into words. He seems to exist, in the eyes of other characters, only to receive meaning, not to make meaning, as the note he shows as a way of communicating says: "I am a deaf-mute, but I read the lips and understand what is said to me. Please do not shout" (McCullers 55).

However, it should be noted that simply being sublimely articulate is no insurance that one can be understood. In the case of the African-American Dr. Copeland, his learning becomes a barrier between himself and others. Copeland left for the North to be educated, and returned to the South to teach and heal his people. However, Copeland is a remote man because of the way he uses his intelligence as a barrier between himself and others. When he argues about Marxism with Blount, he is so erudite that his fellow Marxist grows angry because he cannot understand him. Copeland throws a Christmas party for the African-American people of the town, but even he knows that no one will remember the impassioned speech he gives about racial injustice. "This is one of the commandments Karl Marx left us, 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,'" he intones, only to be asked if he is speaking of the Mark in the Bible (McCullers 189). Copeland's own children accept the roles they are forced into by racist white society, and Copeland is unable to prevent his son for being unjustly thrown in jail. Cruelly, the son of a doctor is beaten and loses his feet to infection because he is denied medical treatment. And finally, Copeland's own body is exhausted and betrays him, as he slowly succumbs to tuberculosis.