I dimly remember
reading Carson McCullers The Heart is a
Lonely Hunter around the time we were reading To Kill a Mockingbird. At the
least my current reading of McCullers reminds me of Harper Lee’s great
novel. Set in the days at the end of
1939, she recaptures all the difficulties at the tail end of the
depression. Inevitably, it also examines
the Jim Crow era in the south. This
classic novel should be on everyone’s bookshelf.
According to the
back cover, Carson McCullers was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1917. She graduated from high school at 16, and
began to pursue a dream of becoming a concert pianist. Rheumatic fever cut short those hopes. While in recovery, she became a voracious
reader and decided to become a writer.
Carson wrote a total of nine novels, one of which was made into a play. She died at the young age of fifty in New
York.
The title of the
novels tells all – the southern town is populated by characters who struggle
with loneliness throughout their lives.
McCullers begins the novel with the appearance of Singer and Antonapoulos. She writes, “In the town there were two
mutes, and they were always together.
Early every morning they would come out from the house where they lived
and walk arm in arm down the street to work.
The two friends were very different.
The one who always steered the way was an obese and dreamy Greek. In the summer he would come out wearing a
yellow or green polo shirt stuffed sloppily into his trousers in front and
hanging loose behind. When it was colder
he wore over this a shapeless gray sweater.
His face was round and oily, with half closed eyelids and lips that
curved in a gentle, stupid smile. The
other mute was tall. His eyes had a
quick, intelligent expression. He was
always immaculate and very soberly dressed” (3). These two men carry a thread through the
entire novel, and they affect a variety of characters in an almost exclusively
positive way.
Mick Kelly a
16-year-old high school student, began to develop a strange attraction to the
tall Mr. Singer. She secretly followed
him to work in the morning, and she waited for him after his work day
ended. She thought of him
constantly. Singer welcomed her into his
apartment, where they played chess, listened to the radio, and talked about
their lives. Singer held up his end of
the conversation with a silver pencil.
Everyone liked Mick and Singer, and several other people visited Singer
for the same purposes. Even an
African-American Doctor had been partially abandoned by his children. In one scene, he sits in a rocking chair in
his empty house as his children try and move him into retirement.
As any reader can imagine,
all of the characters spend vast amounts of time reflecting on their lives,
fretting about their future, or the impending war. I frequently found myself deeply involved
with these characters. I wanted to
sympathize, to advise, to help them. Carson
McCuller’s splendid novel, The Heart Is a
Lonely Hunter, is anything but dull and depressing. It is, however, a story which drew me into
this town, the local bar, the doctor’s office, the apartment where Singer and
Mick lived, and the quiet lives most of these characters experienced. Be prepared.
The ending is startling. 5 stars
--Chiron, 4/22/17
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