While The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is not a particularly symbolic novel, one important symbol of the characters’ collective longing for self-expression, communication, and release from their respective isolation does emerge: music. Mick Kelly is the character most connected to the symbol of music, as she dreams of being a famous composer, conductor, and concert pianist renowned the world over for her symphonies. Music unlocks something profound in Mick—it drives her wild, releasing intense emotional and physical reactions to the beauty of the notes contained within the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and other orchestral compositions she hears on the radio. Mick doesn’t have a radio of her own and is instead forced to listen quietly to the radios of her parents’ boarders or to roam the streets of wealthier neighborhoods, searching for the sounds of another family’s radio wafting down to the lawn. Mick’s desire to compose music is intricately tied in with the enormous desire she has to express herself—a desire that is constantly thwarted by the bustling, chaotic environment of her parents’ boarding house.
While no other character in the novel loves music so well as Mick does, John Singer—the deaf and mute man who becomes a kind of sage figure to whom the book’s four major characters can vent—has a radio in spite of his inability to enjoy it. After John’s death, Mick inherits his radio, though she doesn’t get any joy out of listening to it any longer. Music, then, is also a symbol for the ways in which the desire to be seen, heard, known, and profoundly understood—a pressing want for Mick and Singer as well as Jake Blount, Biff Brannon, and Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland—dulls itself over time if one is unable to find that kind of connection and communion. Mick spends the entire book dreaming of music and longing for a way to make herself known to others, but by its end, she has resigned herself to the idea that both her concert-pianist dreams and her more ineffable, secret desire to be fully comprehended by another person may never be fulfilled.
Music Quotes in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
[Mick] wondered what kind of music [Singer] heard in his mind that his ears couldn’t hear. Nobody knew. And what kind of things he would say if he could talk. Nobody knew that either.
It was good to talk. The sound of his voice gave him pleasure. The tones seemed to echo and hang on the air so that each word sounded twice. He swallowed and moistened his mouth to speak again. He wanted suddenly to return to the mute’s quiet room and tell him of the thoughts that were in his mind. It was a queer thing to want to talk with a deaf-mute. But he was lonesome.
The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony… […] Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.
The radio and the lights in the house were turned off. [...] Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh with her fists. […] But she could not feel this hard enough. The rocks under the bush were sharp. She grabbed a handful of them and began scraping them up and down on the same spot until her hand was bloody. Then she fell back to the ground and lay looking up at the night. With the fiery hurt in her leg she felt better. She was limp on the wet grass, and after a while her breath came slow and easy again.
[Mick] went into the inside room. […] School and the family and the things that happened every day were in the outside room. Mister Singer was in both rooms. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room. […] The inside room was a very private place. She could be in the middle of a house full of people and still feel like she was locked up by herself.
But now no music was in her mind. […] It was like she was shut out from the inside room. Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go—but she never went into the inside room with music like she used to do. It was like she was too tense. Or maybe because it was like the store took all her energy and time. […] When she used to come home from school she felt good and was ready to start working on the music. But now she was always tired.
Music Symbol Timeline in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
