The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers
read: 2010
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #17, Guardian 1000 Novels

I read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter around the same time as Go Tell It on the Mountain, and I link them in my mind as semi-autobiographical coming-of-age stories.  That's a disservice to both works, as they're bigger in scope than the characters (in Heart's case, the tomboyish Mick Kelly) that parallel the lives of the authors.  The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter has great, tragic characters - the widower who tends bar, the proud black doctor who is estranged from his children, the Communist drunkard.  And they all find solace on John Singer, the patient deaf-mute whose world is crushed when his only friend goes insane and is sent to an asylum.

As the book goes on, though, Mick Kelly assumes a larger role.  The prevailing mood in the story is a seeping loneliness and hopelessness, and the other characters are all doomed.  The characters are isolated and unable to connect with each other; they find solace in the companionship of Singer, who is limited in his ability to communicate.  We know where they will be in ten years, and is the same place they are now, perhaps with a few more scars.  Their tragedy is not a huge downfall but Thoreau's "quiet desperation."  But Mick Kelly has youth on her side, and a chance to make something better for herself.  She represents hope.  So perhaps it is fitting that my enduring memory of the novel is her story.