Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Loneliness and Isolation
Communication and Self-Expression
Racism, Inequality, and Injustice
The Individual vs. Society
The American South
Summary
Analysis
It is time for Singer to make yet another journey to visit Antonapoulos. He brings with him several gifts and a crate of fresh strawberries for his friend. The long train journey on the crowded car does not agitate Singer—he is wrapped up in thoughts of his four visitors. He is perturbed by a recent quarrel between Blount and Copeland—they are both so heated whenever they talk to him about it that he hardly understands what has transpired. He feels guilty about letting Mick down, too—she came to his room one morning full of questions, but he couldn’t understand her, and simply nodded. The speech of strangers, too, has become more frenzied and unintelligible to Singer lately, and as the train pulls away from the station, he falls asleep puzzling over these miscommunications.
The revelation that Singer told Mick to go ahead and take the job—but did so without actually realizing what she was asking him—is sad and painful. Singer’s communication issues lately are strange to him, and seem to portend that something is very wrong. Singer is perhaps burnt out, tired of playing the role of mediator and sage—and on some level, perhaps he is rejecting his visitors’ attempts to get through to him as a way of freeing himself from his responsibilities to them.
Themes
Singer wakes later in the afternoon and watches the countryside roll by outside his window. He is excited to see his friend, who will surely be out of the infirmary by now. He has been dreaming of Antonapoulos more and more lately, and can always see his face very clearly in these dreams.
Singer’s love for Antonapoulos endures—the dreams of his friend’s face that once frightened him now comfort him. He misses Antonapoulos more and more all the time, perhaps because he is increasingly burdened by being a mirror for his four visitors.
Themes
The next morning, the train pulls into the station and Singer disembarks. He orders himself a lavish breakfast at the hotel in town, then dresses and shaves for his visit with Antonapoulos. When he arrives at the asylum, he finds that Antonapoulos is not in the infirmary. He makes his way to the main office and writes on a piece of paper from his pad, inquiring where Antonapoulos has been moved. The young man behinds the desk writes a note back, and when Singer reads it, he grows full of despair. Antonapoulos is dead.
The realization that Antonapoulos is dead flattens Singer completely. Singer has been feeling connected to his friend in spite of the distance between them—and now realizes that this sense of being connected was false all along, a fiction he made up in his mind. In this moment, McCullers seems to question whether even seemingly meaningful instances of interpersonal connection are actually real.
Themes
Singer returns to the hotel and gathers his things. He steals soap, a pen, toilet paper, and a Bible from his room before leaving and adds them to his bags. The train back home doesn’t leave until nighttime, and Singer finds himself wandering the town listlessly and aimlessly. While walking past the pool room, he spots a group of three deaf men signing at one another inside. Singer hurries in and greets them, and the men happily clap him on the back and order him a drink. Singer signs to them and asks if they knew Antonapoulos. When the men reply that they did not, Singer becomes drained and cold, and soon the men begin to leave Singer out of their conversation.
In this passage, Singer stumbles upon a chance for connection and community just when he needs it most. Rather than take advantage of the opportunity and make some new friends, however, Singer isolates himself within his grief and alienates the three men—the first people like himself he’s met in years. It’s also notable that Singer steals from the hotel, when he used to worry about Antonapoulos’s stealing. It seems that Singer is inadvertently becoming more like Antonapoulos.
Themes
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Singer nearly misses his train that night, catching it by the skin of his teeth. As the train pulls away from the station, he eats the berries he brought for Antonapoulos one by one. Afterwards, Singer falls asleep for the 12-hour remainder of the journey. When the train gets to the station, the conductor has to shake Singer awake. After stopping by the jewelry shop to collect “something heavy,” Singer returns to the boarding house. Up in his room he drinks an iced coffee and smokes a cigarette, then pulls a pistol from his pocket and with it commits suicide.
Singer’s suicide is quick, final, brutal, and perhaps unexpected. Singer has been the kind, gentle, affable glue at the center of the novel, but this act shows just how tenuous his connection to happiness, hope, and indeed his own life has been all along. Having Antonapoulos—another person who was the same as him, who recognized him, and who served as a sounding board for him—sustained Singer; now that Antonapoulos is gone, he feels he has nothing and no one.
Themes
