The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) is a Southern Gothic novel by American writer Carson McCullers (1917-1967). Set in a small mining town in Georgia, the story follows a non-speaking deaf character named John Singer who attracts the company of other outsiders at the New York Cafe. The novel deals with themes of isolation and loneliness in the American South.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Characters
The novel focuses on five characters who frequent the New York Cafe and form friendships with John Singer.
| Character | Explanation and Analysis |
| John Singer | The novel's protagonist is a deaf man who can not communicate through speech. Despite his inability to hold a conversation, other characters are drawn to John's presence and confide in him. After John loses his only friend, he begins to visit the New York Cafe, where other customers gravitate towards his calming presence. Despite being befriended by the rest of the characters, John feels intensely alone and misses his best friend, Spiros. |
| Biff Brannon | Biff owns the New York Cafe, which provides a welcoming place for the town's outcasts. He likes to observe his customers' lives but struggles with his sense of loneliness and belonging. After his wife's death, Biff feels increasingly isolated and heartbroken that he will never experience fatherhood. |
| Mick Kelly | Mick is an introspective teenager who feels out of place in her small hometown. She spends most of her time deep in thought, yearning to find an outlet for her creative urges, but only feels comfortable sharing these ideas with John Singer. She learns to appreciate music and makes her attempts at songwriting. |
| Dr. Benedict Copeland | As a Black doctor, Copeland feels isolated from both the white community because of his race and the Black community because of his higher education. An avid reader, Copeland admires the radical theories of Karl Marx and even names one of his sons after the thinker. He sees Marx's ideas as a means of improving the conditions of the Black community but struggles to translate his words into actions. |
| Jake Blount | Jake is a rootless drifter who finds solace in alcohol and thoughts of revolution. Like Copeland, he sees Karl Marx's theories as a way to overthrow the unfair society that perpetuates inequality and poverty. However, Jake's political beliefs often leave him isolated and bitter. |
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Summary
Below is a summary of the main plot points for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The novel takes place in a small mining town in Georgia during the Great Depression (1929–1939) and is divided into three parts.
Part One
John Singer is deaf and unable to communicate using speech. He works as a silver engraver and lives with his only friend, Spiros Antonapoulos. Spiros is also unable to communicate with other people. With their shared world experience, both men enjoy a deep bond and live a content life until Spiros contracts a severe illness. After recovering, Spiros begins to exhibit odd behavior and is placed in a state psychiatric hospital.
McCullers' original title for the novel was The Mute.
Having lost his only friend, John moves into a boarding house owned by the Kelly family, where he meets the family's daughter, Mick, who dreams of becoming a musician. Every day, John eats at the New York Cafe and becomes friendly with the owner, Biff Brannon. The cafe is a welcoming hangout for outsiders like John and plays host to a cast of characters who find themselves drawn to John's calming presence. Jake Blount is a drifter who gets drunk and spouts radical political rants at the counter. Benedict Copeland is a Black doctor who feels isolated in the predominantly white town.
Fig. 1 - Biff Brannon's New York Cafe becomes a haven for the town's outcasts and misfits.
As Copeland, Jake, Biff, and Mick struggle with personal problems and social pressures, they find solace in talking to John. Although John can not conduct a conversation, they each view him as a trustworthy and nonjudgemental listener, finding comfort in his presence. When John visits Spiros in the psychiatric hospital, he finds his old friend distant and uncommunicative.
The other characters often share their probes and dreams with John but cannot ask him about his issues. Are the other characters using John? Why or why not?
Part Two
As time passes in the small town, each character continues to come to the cafe to talk to John. Biff is grief-stricken when his wife dies during surgery and is comforted by his sister-in-law, Lucille, and her child, Baby. Mick goes to a party at a schoolmate's house and meets a young Jewish boy named Harry, who tells her about his intense hatred of Fascism. Soon afterward, while walking through Harry's neighborhood, Mick hears a piece of classical music that awakens her dreams of becoming a concert pianist.
Dr. Copeland desperately wants to improve conditions for Black people but struggles with his own family. His son, Willie, is charged with manslaughter after getting into a fight in a dancehall. After discovering he has tuberculosis, Copeland attempts to reconcile with his estranged sons and inspire his community to fight the oppressive system of segregation.
Fig. 2 - In the American South, strict racial segregation laws discriminated against Black people.
Meanwhile, Jake continues to get drunk at the cafe and rant about the teachings of Karl Marx and his dreams of overthrowing America's capitalist system. Dr. Copeland, also an avid follower of Marxist theory, gives an inspiring speech about the virtues of Marxism at his family's Christmas party. The crowd claps as he talks about the Black community overthrowing their racist oppressors, but Copeland wonders if any of them will take his words to heart. He receives news that Willie has been tortured by correctional officers and lost both of his feet. An enraged Copeland attempts to talk to the local judge but is brutally beaten by a sheriff.
Meanwhile, a grieving Biff feels increasingly alone in the world. When he begins to wear his wife's perfume and wishes Lucille and Baby were his wife and child. Mick's inspiration grows, and she begins to write creative ideas in her journal. She also finds herself increasingly attracted to Harry. After the pair have sex, Harry becomes paranoid that his mother will find out and tells Mick he has to leave town. Shortly afterward, Mick drops out of school and gets a job at a department store to help her impoverished family.
Some scholars have interpreted Biff as an androgynous character. Is this an accurate interpretation?
When Jake finds out about Willie's situation, he visits Copeland's house and volunteers to help the family. He drunkenly stumbles into a bedroom and finds a weak Copeland recuperating from tuberculosis. The men discuss Marxism and agree that they must end injustice. However, the men disagree on the means of action, and an argument ensues. As the rest of the characters face their struggles, John visits Spiros at the asylum but discovers his friend has died. John grieves for several days before shooting himself in the chest.
Despite their different backgrounds and social standings, both Jake and Dr. Copeland share a deep belief in the political ideology of Karl Marx (1818-1883). Marx was a German political thinker and philosopher who produced a series of writings during the mid-19th century, which helped form the basis of Communism.
In Das Kapital (1867), Marx argued that capitalistic systems are built on the exploitation of the working class. To create a more equitable society, he proposed a political and economic system where everyone is equally rewarded for their labor, thereby creating a classless system. These ideas influenced the Russian Revolution of 1917, which replaced the monarchy with a Communist government.
Fig. 3 - Copeland and Jake see the radical politics of Karl Marx as a means of ending social injustices.
During the Great Depression, radical politics like Marxism became increasingly popular, especially within the emerging American labor union movement. In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Jake often rants about his hatred of capitalism and suggests taking violent action to further the cause. Copeland is more level-headed and sees it as his mission to raise the awareness of the Black community and offer Marxism as a viable alternative to the current oppressive system.
Interestingly when both of the Marxist characters meet in the book, they agree the system needs to be overthrown but bitterly disagree on the methods. McCullers does not use The Heart is a Lonely Hunter to condone or condemn Marxism but instead uses it to highlight the racism and segregation which kept people isolated from one another.
Part Three
The novel's final section takes place a few weeks after John's suicide. His friends are shattered by his death and struggle to understand his actions. Copeland is forced to move to his grandfather's farm to recuperate from his illness. With time on his hands, he sadly laments that he could not help his community or family during his life.
Fig. 4 - After his brief realization, Biff returns to work.
Jack attends a labor protest and becomes a wanted man after it deteriorates into violence. He must flee the town but is determined to remain in the South and fight injustice. Mick sits in the cafe each night, exhausted from work and disappointed by her life, wondering if she will ever be inspired to write music again. As Biff closes the diner, he thinks about his customers' lives and briefly ponders the meaning of life. A moment of realization dawns on him as he senses that all humans struggle with a sense of loneliness and the search for meaning. This realization fills him with an overwhelming feeling of love and connection before he caught his reflection in the mirror and feels embarrassed. He quickly returns to preparing the restaurant for the next day.
The novel ends with a generally pessimistic tone. Are there any signs of hope for the characters?
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Themes
In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers explores themes of isolation and loneliness.
Isolation and Loneliness
Despite being unable to communicate with others, John Singer can forge strong relationships because people see him as a trustworthy and attentive listener with whom they can confide their deepest secrets and biggest fears. Yet John still feels isolated because he cannot share his thoughts and feelings. After losing Spiros, John cannot form another close relationship, leading to his suicide.
While John's isolation comes from a lack of communication, other characters' are isolated by various social and personal factors. Copeland is isolated from white people because of his race and the segregationist laws of the era. Despite being a highly educated doctor, he is not considered equal. Similarly, he feels isolated from his own family and other members of the Black community who view his education and manners with suspicion.
Fig. 5 - The novel's main characters suffer from loneliness and cannot make strong connections with other people.
Mick comes from a big family but cannot connect with any of her relatives because she wants more out of life. Her passion for music and desire to create art set her apart from others, and her isolation sometimes provides her with some sense of comfort and escapism. Jake Blount wants to improve the lives of the oppressed but frequently turns to alcohol to cope with his loneliness and anger. Biff talks to others and gives life advice but becomes increasingly isolated after losing his wife, haunted by the thought that he will never have children.
Each character finds some sense of connection and companionship through John but cannot form an intense and open relationship with him due to his disability. McCullers shows that isolation and loneliness affect all human beings regardless of race, gender, and class. While some of the characters initially feel some sense of power from their isolation, it ultimately hurts their ability to connect with others.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Meaning
The novel's meaning concerns loneliness and the individual's search for connection. The title comes from the poem "The Lonely Hunter" by Fiona MacLeod, the pen name of Scottish author William Sharp (1855-1905). The poem from his 1896 book From the Hills of Dreams contains the lines:
Green wind from the green-gold branches, what is the song you bring?
What are all songs for me, now, who no more care to sing?
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." (lines 9-12)
The "hunter" represents each character's desire to find something that will give them a sense of connection and fulfillment in the world. To some, that includes relationships with people, while others want to stamp out injustice or express their true selves. Each character suffers from loneliness and wants to belong; ironically, their loneliness is self-perpetuating as it stops the characters from getting what they want most. Since the book's publication, the title has become a common phrase to describe loneliness.
Fig. 6 - The novel's title comes from a poem by William Sharp.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter contains many aspects of the Southern Gothic tradition.
Southern Gothic is a literary style from the American South that often deals with themes of isolation, violence, and poverty. Novels in the Southern Gothic tradition usually feature decaying structures or systems to represent moral decline. Famous authors from the Southern Gothic tradition include William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and Flannery O'Connor.
The characters are outsiders who feel repressed and frustrated at the society of the American South. This is most obvious in the example of Copeland, who experiences oppressive racism daily. Like many works of Southern Gothic, McCuller uses The Heart is a Lonely Hunter to question the idea of Southern manners and civility. By sharing the outsider's perspective, McCuller shows that Southern society is capable of ostracization and even violence against those who don't fit into mainstream society.
Symbolism
In Mick's story, McCullers uses music to symbolize freedom and expression. Mick is first drawn to John Singer because he owns a radio and shares her love of music. She dreams of one day becoming a concert pianist and holds onto this dream as means of escaping her limited life in a small town.
Mick's life is transformed when she hears Beethoven's Third Symphony (1803) wafting out of a window while walking through Harry's neighborhood. Her first exposure to high culture brings a rush of feelings and revelations to Mick, who is inspired to start wiring her music. The Third Symphony is a piece focused on maturation; McCullers used this piece instead of the more recognizable Fifth or Ninth to symbolize Mick's growth.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Quotes
Below are important quotes from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, examining the isolation and frustration of being an outsider in the American South.
It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house." (Part 1, Ch. 3)
Although Mick Kelly comes from a large family and is always surrounded by her siblings but still feels a tremendous sense of loneliness. Like most of the characters in the novel, Mick's loneliness stems from a more profound lack of connection and an inability to fit in with the people around them.
Wherever you look there's meanness and corruption. This room, this bottle of grape wine, these fruits in the basket, are all products of profit and loss. A fellow can't live without giving his passive acceptance to meanness." (Part 1, Ch. 4)
Jake Blount frequently rants about the evils of capitalism when he's drunk. Ironically, Jake wants to unite his fellow citizens around a common cause but becomes more frustrated when he feels people aren't hearing him. This frustration leads to more drinking, causing him to become more isolated.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Key takeaways
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a novel by American writer Carson McCullers.
- John Singer is a non-speaking deaf man who attracts the company of other outsiders at the New York Cafe. Each character finds solace in confiding in John.
- The novel deals with loneliness and racial discrimination in the American South.
- The book is an example of the Southern Gothic tradition.
- The novel's title comes from the poem "The Lonely Hunter" by Fiona MacLeod.
References
- Fig. 1 - Cafe interior by Ammodramus, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Range_Cafe_interior_2.JPG
- Fig. 2 - Segregation at the bus station in Durham, North Carolina in 1940 by Jack Delano: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:At_the_bus_station_in_Durham,_North_Carolina._1940.jpg
- Fig. 6 - William Sharp by Unknown author, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Sharp_(writer)_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_19028.jpg
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