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Essay / The novel The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers was written by Carson McCullers and published in 1940. This novel is set during the Depression in a small southern town. The story follows a mute man named John Singer. Singer runs away from home when his only friend is taken to a mental hospital. Once he finds a new home, many lonely people in the community come to talk to him. Singer and all the people who speak to him are the focus of the book. What is unusual about this novel is the fact that the story changes focus throughout the chapters to focus on a different character and their development for each. John Singer's unique characterization helps develop the novel's main theme of how everyone sometimes struggles to interact with others. Despite the fact that the book follows several other characters, John Singer is the protagonist of this novel. He is the only person or "thing" that all the other characters have in common, even if they don't realize it. He is a character full of mystery and other people use him to speak even though he is mute. The singer is often a tool that others use to feel like they can relate to someone. This can be seen with the young girl Mick Kelly. She “loved going up to Mr. Singer’s room. Even though he was deaf and mute, he understood every word she said to him” (McCullers 78). Mick uses Mr. Singer as a tool to feel connected to someone, since she has no real friends her age and she is the middle child in a fairly large family. Another character that clings to Mr. Singer as a tool is the Radical City. Jake Blount drunk. The reader can see Blount using Singer as a person to connect to in a one-sided conversation where Blount talks about politics...... middle of paper ...... and maybe he could have connected to someone, he would not have killed himself.John Singer is a great example of a character who has difficulty interacting with those around him in the novel The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. Mr. Singer was alienated and often used as a tool by others to feel connected. Mr. Singer served as an idea to those around him: “[t]he rich thought he was rich and the poor thought he was a poor man like themselves. And since there was no way to refute these rumors, they became wonderful and very real. Everyone described the mute as they wanted it to be” (190). This, along with Singer's relationship with Antonapoulos, his muteness, and his suicide, all illustrate the theme of how everyone sometimes struggles to relate to others in this book. Works CitedMcCullers, Carson. The Heart is a solitary hunter. New York: Bantam Books, 1953. Print.
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