"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

 "In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together." (1)

 There are novels you finish reading, and you know. You feel slightly, forever, less for experiencing the loss of the novel, the loss of a loved character-- and forever slightly more for having known them. Carson McCullers' modern masterpiece "The Heart is A Lonely Hunter" is without question one of these novels. At once, the novel is a meditation on life, love and the loneliness that so often lives between in human relationships-- and an almost unbelievably wise exploration of the forces of government, religion and other politics in which we live our lives.

 It is often mentioned that McCullers somehow managed to write this novel when she was 23. Twenty-three.  In 1940, for whatever age she may have been, McCullers wrote a perfectly executed, spectacularly profound novel which comments on racial, sexual and gender roles in a way so beyond her years, it's almost hard to believe.

 Each character we meet in her novel is painfully real, and though we meet them in the deep American south of the 1930's, we have met them before in the world where we live. At the center of the story is Mr. John Singer, a deaf mute, who lived with the friend he loved until his friend's family had him put away in an asylum. Mr. Singer befriends a number of people in the small town-- Mick, a girl of about 14, confused and searching and raging and hurting; Biff Brannon, the owner of a local cafe; Jake Blount, a rebellious spirit yearning for political, social and religious revolution; and Dr. Copeland, an African-American doctor who has held his head high on his life-long quest to better his race and his people's place in the world.

 And there is so much within these characters' lives and happenings, that it does a disservice to the novel to not talk about each of the many issues so poignantly dealt with in an in-depth way which would span many pages of my own. Mr. Singer loves his friend Antonopoulos, with an all-consuming love which does not, and cannot, speak its name. Young Mick longs for all the answers she cannot even ask the questions for-- and finds her only solace in the art of classical music, and Mr. Singer's friendship. Mr. Brannon considers a great deal of poignancy on the subject of religion-- and Jake Blount rages against the political and social machines which oppress every man, woman and child in the poor south, during the time now known as the American Great Depression. And Dr. Copeland works all his life for a better future for his children and his people-- going so far as to advocate a march on Washington, DC for racial equality.

 I am simply in awe of how effortlessly McCullers switches from the perspective of each character. In the passages told from Mick's point of view, the reader feels the pain, the bursting confusion of adolescence-- and the reader feels, and knows, how real the solace Mick finds in her music is; a safe place from the confusing world around her she has found herself coming of age in. And in Dr. Copeland's passages, the reader feels the oppression of the social structure upon the successful African-American physician, which is thrust upon the great thinker the doctor is-- as he tackles incredible ideas such as the writings of Karl Marx, and faces the struggles of maintaining a relationship with his grown children. And in the passages of Mr. Singer's thoughts, the reader knows how much Antonopoulous is loved. How desperate Mr. Singer is to have his friend with him, and how no other friendship, no other person, will be for him who Antonopoulous is.

 All these characters are searching, longing for something, someone. There are fewer more haunting titles in literature, and more lingering prose than the lives of Mick, Mr. Singer and Dr. Copeland-- and how they look for what they feel needs to be found. As Dr. Copeland's daughter Portia, who works for Mick's family, says of Mick: "'... This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don;t love and don't have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined. Won't nothing help you then.'" (44)

 "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" is one of those novels which will make you feel. With one line, McCullers broke my heart, and took her place in literature. It has been quite a long time since I have been this affected by a novel-- and I'm sure it will be some time before I experience something similar, again. "Mick cried so hard that she choked herself and her father had to beat her on the back." (305)