At my classics book club last night, one of the women had not had a chance to read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (published 1940), but she came to hear the discussion about it nonetheless. She was not familiar with the book, and as we discussed it, she commented on how strange it all sounded.

“It sounds like it’s about a bunch of misfits that no one listens to,” she said.

We all concurred. And yet, such a summary does not do justice to the complexities that 23-year-old Carson McCullers captured in her debut novel, a small snapshot of life in a small Southern town in the Great Depression era.

“Snapshot” is the wrong word, however. McCullers herself was a musician (passing up her acceptance to Julliard for lack of money) and she dubbed her novel a “fugue.”

“Like a voice in a fugue, each one of the main characters is an entity in himself – but his personality takes on a new richness when contrasted and woven in with the other characters in the book.” (Quoted on the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt study guide)

Such is the set up of the book: four lonely people in a small town turn to the only man who seems to care about them, the deaf and mute John Singer. Ironically, this deaf-mute is the only one who “listens” to their concerns and stories. He can read lips, and he is able to speak (he was trained as a child) yet simply chooses not to respond in the conversations he has with the “lonely hunters” who visit him. He responds simply with a smile and a nod. Each chapter focuses on one of the “lonely hunters,” alternating among all of them, including the deaf-mute, who, despite his appearance as a confessor and friend for the others, is in actually the loneliest of them all.

First, there is Mick, a tomboy entering adolescence and struggling to find herself in her large and impoverished family. She’s a musician, trying to teach herself the piano and memorizing the classical music she overhears on the radio as she wanders the streets at night. Then we have Mr. Biff Brannon, a middle-aged café owner and bartender estranged from his wife Alice and hopelessly seeking some connection to people in the small town. Jake Blount is an outsider to the town, arriving drunk and eventually settling down as a carnival worker to pay off his drinking debts. Doctor Copeland is the black doctor of the town, estranged from his own grown children because of their lack of interest in his ideals for the future of his race.

Yet, these initial definitions and descriptions fail to fully encapsulate these individuals: each of them struggles with a personal ideology of life and the meaning of life that they are unable to express to themselves, let alone those around them. Further, their loneliness and concerns are amplified in the novel by the ways in which they relate to one another.

Mr. Brannon wants to connect with people, especially to take care of the children of the town (as evidenced by his concern for Mick:  should he really be selling her cigarettes?). He would have loved to be a father, and instead he must settle for taking care of his young niece, Baby. Jake Blount and Doctor Copeland embrace Marxism and strive to impart the significance of a socialist way of life to those with whom they associate. But although these two men share similar ideas, each time they meet, they argue, unable to properly listen to the other in order to determine that they are saying the same things. John Singer himself lives in Mick’s parent’s boarding house, and as each of these “lonely hunters” tromp their way to Singer’s room, Mick comes to even better appreciate the kindness that Singer imparts as she tries to share with him her deep passion for music. Each of the characters also comes to a certain crisis of faith as they try to reconcile God to the world in which they live, some like Doctor Copeland rejecting God all together.

*spoilers*

John Singer himself is the most complicated of the “lonely hunters,” for the reader doesn’t completely comprehend what he understands throughout the novel. As a deaf-mute, he’s obviously separate from others in the town, and yet, he seems so integral to the comfort of the “lonely hunters” who seek him out. The clue to understanding him came late in the novel, when his dream (Antonopoulous at the top of the stairs, Singer next, and the four “lonely hunters” below him) clarifies how he sees himself. In that dream, one can finally see that Singer idealized his relationship with the insane Antonopoulous just as the four others idealized their relationship with Singer. Singer was just as lonely as those who sought his friendship.

My heart nearly broke when I read his un-mailed letter to Antonopoulous, and I must admit that I was quite emotional as he made committed suicide after Antonopoulous’s death.  It wasn’t only his deafness that drove him to that step: he had met other deaf men at a bar outside of Antonopoulous asylum, but Singer, like the ”lonely hunters” who sought him out, was unable to communicate with those others. He only had Antonopoulous, and without his Greek friend, he could not cope with his loneliness any longer.

*end spoilers*

McCullers originally intended to name the novel The Mute, but (thank goodness) the title was changed. The title comes from a poem.

Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.
Green is that hill and lonely, set far in a shadowy place;
White is the hunter’s quarry, a lost-loved human face:
by William Sharp writing as Fiona MacLeod

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is not a happy novel. It’s quite depressing to read, and it ends without hope for the central characters, as their loneliness is never truly lost. The characters never found their “hunter’s quarry.” The cycle of life for Blount, the aging Doctor Copeland, Mr. Brannon, and Mick will continue to provide loneliness.

Yet, there is something so beautiful in Carson McCuller’s exploration of loneliness in a small society. She was recently married and only 23 years old when she wrote and published her debut novel. The fact that she was so young adds to my amazement at the depth of emotion she was able to portray among so many very different personalities in a fictional novel: each character was searching for something a little bit different to lessen the pain of loneliness. How realistic each character was, and how griping their combined story became!

Having read the novel once, I am not able to fully comprehend the ways in which the characters all wove together, yet I loved the effect. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is not, as I’m sure you have been able to ascertain, a plot-driven novel, but rather a subtle and complex look at human psychology: the hopes, dreams, and loneliness that comes from isolation (for whatever reason) in a small town. It’s a masterpiece for its strong writing as well as its complexities of character. Highly recommended.

Related posts:

Stories by Flannery O’Connor Enchanted Hunters by Maria Tatar Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson The Scarlet Letter, Part 2: Thoughts on the Characters