"People remain necessarily lonely and isolated in a world full of people as lonely and isolated as themselves" (Huf 237). In the book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers uses this theme of isolation in order to express the human craving to communicate and the illusions caused by the "inescapable human need to love" (Allen 208).
Since the very first pages of this solemn parable, the theme of loneliness is exemplified throughout. With each character's situation introducing this solitude to a new depth, the reader is able to take away an understanding of the tragic view of human existence that the novel suggests.
The novel itself, some say, is a "pervasive cry by McCullers for sympathy" (Kazin 345). In many ways, the story pertains to her own troubled childhood filled with loss and a never-ending search for identity. McCullers even once admitted, "Certainly I have always felt alone" (Presley 346). This came about through a series of traumas she had to learn to live with throughout her early life.
Born in Columbus, Georgia on February 19, 1917, "McCullers built her life on the hope that, somehow, Paris or New York would reach down and rescue her from the frustration and stagnation she felt and feared in the South" (Presley 346). Her mother always insisted she was different from other children, and at 5'8 *" at the age of thirteen, Carson seemed to her to be freakish (Helterman, Layman 318). "The considerable freedom and constant approval that her mother gave her produced an effect of aloofness and eccentricity in her behavior that was greeted by Columbus adolescents with catcalls of 'Freak!'" (318). This only added to the isolation she became accustomed to.
At seventeen McCullers was diagnosed as having "pneumonia with complications." This later was discovered to be rheumatic fever, and she continued to have repeated attacks of anemia, pleurisy, and other respiratory ailments (Hershey). During her recuperation in the winter of 1936, perhaps at a time when she was most vulnerable, McCullers began the writing of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, incorporating all of life's troubles she had experienced and the true human loneliness she was living. Through this, she "longed to transcend the environment of her frustrated childhood" (Presley 346). The mistreatment she had received by society and life in general became the foundation of the alienation and longing for affection she related in the novel.
Her interpretation of love, in that it is mostly one-sided, is the basis for her creation of unusual characters (Harte, Riley 754). "The story is mainly concerned with four figures grappling with life from the different angles of growing childhood, the race problem, socialism, and common sense" (Lubbers 423). All of them are alone and in search of someone who will show compassion towards their needs.
"At the center of these sufferers is John Singer, the perfect representative" (Beetz 1879). "His chief characteristic is his muteness, which is the mark of his distance from others" (Rich 336). Losing his only friend and living partner, Antonapoulos, to a mental hospital, Singer entered a lifestyle of desolation. He needed to have somebody there, but longed for no one but his lost companion. He was left to wander the streets and eat silently at the same restaurant everyday. This absence of communication and deterioration of character is used to represent the growing theme of isolation, which has become his lifestyle.
The character Jake Blount is a man who had nothing in the world. He starts off by living nowhere, owning nothing, and having no friends. He tries to release his loneliness through drinking, but this only ruins him more. The reader is truly able to see how helpless he felt when one night he broke down and could not stop. "Öhe was holding his hand over his mouth because his lips were trembling. The tears began to roll down his grimy face. Now and then he glanced sideways at Biff and Singer, angry that they should see him cry. It was embarrassing" (McCullers 23). Soon, "The loneliness in him was so keen that he was filled with terror" (130). His actions and inner feelings were the display of yet another man lost in an unforgiving world, and this loneliness is used as a main conveyance of the theme.
McCullers expresses tomboy Mick's separation from the world through the description of her many paintings. From an airplane crashing to her whole town on fire, these drawings symbolize the turmoil and grief Mick was feeling inside. In one instance, she was found thinking how "it was funny how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house" (McCullers 45). She longed to belong to a "bunch" or group that she could be a part of, and so held a prom party. By the end, however, it did not help, and "it was like she was so empty there wasn't even a feeling or thought in her" (99).
"In many ways, Mick Kelly is the young Lula Carson Smith, for Mick, like McCullers, is preoccupied with music, and she learns the same truths about loneliness that McCullers abstracted from her experience at an early age and never substantially altered" (Helterman, Layman 318). Music was the field in which McCullers's early ambitions and accomplishments were centered (Harte, Riley 754). Ever since the age of five, she had played the piano and dreamed of becoming a famous musician. During the depression her family sold an heirloom to put her through the Julliard School of Music in New York City, but the money was accidentally lost on the subway. Due to this and her reoccurring illnesses, she had to give up her musical ambitions and take various day jobs while she attended writing courses at Columbia at night (754).
This same familiar situation is what evolved into the basis of Mick's isolation. She turned to music as an escape and loved it with a passion, but in the end was forced to take a trivial job to make money for her family. She felt "cheated," as if someone had taken away the only thing she had remaining, and she was left to exist in a world that offered no release. In this way, McCullers's pain from her own experiences develops into Mick's characterization. With the removal of the only evasion Mick has, McCullers creates a loneliness unimaginable, which exceedingly strengthens the theme.
This isolated existence creates in the characters a "craving to love and communicate with someone who is responsive to their secret being" (Beetz 1879). "Hungry for human sympathy, each of the four [characters] confides in Singer just as Singer had confided in Antonapoulos" (Huf 237). They feel that he will always understand whatever they have to say, and maybe even more than that. To Jake, Singer is the perfect listener who never sneers, never gives him an argument. To Dr. Benedict Copeland, "Singer is a rare instance of the compassionate white man who will understand his idealistic hopes and frustrations in his struggle to elevate the educational level of his people" (Beetz 1878). Biff Brannon looks for answers within the mute to all his most troubling questions. Overall, each character, because of the isolation they are faced with, turns to the mute as their only confidant of true communication.
Each express to Singer their deepest secrets in certainty that he will not turn them away and they will be able to communicate with someone. Through their many meetings with him, a deep connection is built, and they look up to him as more than just a friend. Jake realizes that he only feels at peace when he is with Singer, for Singer is always attentive. Mick sees the mute as her only friend. "It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him"(McCullers 263). In this way, Singer is the answer to Mick's craving to love another and be loved in return.
"Like the autobiographical heroines of the novel, McCullers was always searching for a new, exciting friend, waiting to be invited to a grand occasion, looking for an appreciative audience" (Baechler, Litz 281). She longed to fill the own void in her heart, and so went from lover to lover after divorcing her husband, Reeves McCullers. She even explored her sexuality, later having a female lover, for search of that same special someone who would love her and allow her to love the way she needed to (Hershey). The isolation inside forced her to pursue a companion who would understand and show that they cared, just like each character in the novel searched for their particular confidant. In this way she uses her own inner voice as incorporations to her characters of fiction.
Soon, it is like Singer becomes "a sort of home-made God" (McCullers 198). To Benedict Copeland, "He is not like other people of the Caucasian race" (158). Everyone begins to look up to him, as what he symbolizes was created out of human need. Mick begins to follow him wherever he goes, and develops a love for him that helps comfort the seclusion she is feeling. "Had ever he [Singer] felt a terrible afraidness like this one? No. He had never done anything wrong and his heart was quiet in the nighttime. Yet at the same time he would understand. If only she could tell him about this, then it would be betterÖShe loved him better than anyone in the familyÖIt was a different love. It was not like anything she had ever felt in her life before" (268).
This love signifies the illusions she and the others created concerning Singer. For, "love is the only way to transcend human isolation, but most love is one-sided, based on illusion and doomed to frustration" (Beetz 1879). Singer might have taken comfort in Mick's presence, but he did not love her in the way she so imagined. In fact, it shows that "Gods are created out of human need, but seldom understand or care about the fate of those who adore them" (1879). Singer had become a symbol to his surroundings due to the emptiness that needed to be filled, but was really just as lonely as the rest. He was not the God everyone so wanted him to be.
Through McCullers's use of symbolization dealing with Singer, she is able to exemplify the illusions caused by the need to love. "Singer's godly qualities are supposed to be illusions stemming from the psychological needs of his friends" (Beetz 1880). "Singer appears prominent, but in reality he is little more than a memory or an expectation in the minds of the other characters" (Rich 336). In one case, everyone believed the mute was individually like them, and each man described the mute as he wished him to be. The Jews said that he was a Jew, and a Turk man claimed that he was Turkish. No matter what, people classify the mute to be what they prefer simply because the mute does not classify himself.
Singer is also imagined to understand everything. Jake insists, "Only he and Singer know the truth" (McCullers 244), while Benedict Copeland thinks Singer understands why Willie was crippled. "Doctor Copeland raised up his face to him. 'Have you heard of this?' he asked. Mr. Singer nodded. In his eyes there was no horror or pity or hate. Of all those who knew, his eyes alone did not express these reactions. For he alone understood this thing" (220).
Mick believes that her and Singer share a secret together and that he is the only one who understands. However, "the only person in the world who she thinks understands her does not in fact understand her at all" (Huf 239). Singer is puzzled at the things people tell him and many times does not understand what they mean. In the end, he is just as lonely as the rest and not as wise as everyone assumes, but his inhuman qualities live on in the minds that knew him.
These problems of illusion versus reality strengthen the theme of isolation. The illusions created represent the loneliness felt in the other characters, while the reality is that Singer is just as lonely as the rest. By the end, "he had been left in an alien land" and "all was gone" (McCullers 173, 176). The final test was when he put a bullet through his chest for a chance of escape.
McCullers also "strove throughout her life to make sense of the story she lived, butÖin the end, she was unable to arrive at a final meaning" (Baechler, Litz 279). Her restlessness was represented in her "two marriages to the same man, in her need for new and exotic friendships, and her strong attachment to old friends and family" (Cook 2). In 1948, she attempted like Singer to commit suicide, but failed. The rest of her life was one compilation of misery. Her mother died in 1952, she suffered from severe illnesses in the late fifties, and she had to have surgery for the cancer of her right breast in 1962. Her life finally ceased on September 29, 1967 when her body succumbed after laying comatose for forty-seven days from a massive brain hemorrhage (Hershey). It is almost ironic that her life ended in the exact desolation she forever described.
This can clearly be seen as a "novel of the depressed thirties haunted by the powerlessness of people and the ferocious powers of governments" (Kazin 345). With McCullers writing the novel in the late thirties and the setting of the book taking place in the same time period, she was easily able to incorporate what she was experiencing into the void lives of her characters. At that time the depression was a recent past occurrence, with people still picking up the pieces. In the early thirties, with world trade declining, production dropping, and unemployment increasing, society was at a state of loss (DISCovering US History). It left behind a feeling of hopelessness that is included in the writing and theme.
The character Mick also "projects against the political terror of the Hitler period" throughout the story (Kazin 345). Both she and McCullers were living in an era where Austro-German political leader, Adolph Hitler, was leading a powerful mass movement that destroyed democracy in Germany and began a Third Reich, thought to "last a thousand years" (DISCovering US History). With dossiers compiled on virtually every German to suppress political opposition, the true power of governments was represented (DISCovering US History), as portrayed in the novel as well. This control led to a feeling of helplessness for McCullers and was no doubt used even further to represent the theme of human isolation Mick was feeling in the world around her.
This same lack of human existence and theme of loneliness is used in other novels by female authors. In the feminist book The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the main character Offred is in a society where women are considered inferior and only useful for their fertility. She is kept like a prisoner and alienated from the rest of the world and all customs. "Her only responsibilityÖis to sit quietly and stare out through a window of shatter proof glass. There is not much to think about except the time of the month and the next mealÖ" (Ehrenreich 335).
The isolation she is faced with and loneliness she experiences is so extreme that the idea of living is always in question. At times, all she can do is pray to a God whom she does not truly believe in: "I feel so aloneÖOh God oh God. How can I keep on living" (Atwood 253). By the end, her existence nears deterioration, as she removes herself from all that is left of her miniscule society. "It's possible to go so far in, so far down and back, they could never get you outÖwhy fight? That will never do" (291). Through these thoughts, the reader is able to interpret yet another theme of isolation in a depressed world, where the character is struggling to find true meaning and true love. This similarity of theme between novels then helps to create a better understanding of the ideas present in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, enabling the reader to make their own relations to the story.
McCullers's writing, however, puts into perspective the aspects of human existence present in all. The symbolization increases the depth of her book's meaning and "the basic idea of a deaf mute who inadvertently becomes all things to all men is unique" (Beetz 1880). The reader can easily relate to the theme of human need and seclusion, leaving a haunting yet sad effect. Human isolation is perhaps one of the things we fear the most, yet are unable to avoid. We all long to be loved, and illusion might be the only way to get there. Overall, it is good to know that all hearts at one time or another are lonely hunters.
Works Cited
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