The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

by

Carson McCullers

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Themes and Colors
Loneliness and Isolation Theme Icon
Communication and Self-Expression Theme Icon
Racism, Inequality, and Injustice Theme Icon
The Individual vs. Society Theme Icon
The American South Theme Icon
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.
Communication and Self-Expression Theme Icon

All of the characters in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter struggle with the desire not just for companionship, but for the feeling of being more deeply known. But even as all five of the novel’s central characters yearn to be seen, heard, and understood, they often find themselves unable to communicate with one another in the most basic of ways. As Carson McCullers’s characters battle their loneliness and isolation, she demonstrates how difficult true communication and authentic self-expression can be. Through their struggles, McCullers argues that it is inherently impossible to fully communicate or express the truth of oneself to another person.

McCullers uses five central characters—all of different ages, races, abilities, and walks of life—to illustrate the failures of communication and self-expression that lie at the very heart of the human experience. John Singer is the character who struggles most with the practical aspects of communication. Deaf since infancy and mute for much of his adult life (due to his struggles in school speaking with his mouth and his resultant fear that “there was something disgusting in his speech”), John Singer uses sign language to communicate with his close friend, Spiros Antonapoulos, who is also deaf and mute. When Antonapoulos is taken away to an asylum, however, Singer is once again the only deaf individual in town—there is no one around who understands sign language, and Singer resigns himself either to silence or to, on occasion, writing out simple sentences on pieces of paper. Singer’s practical issues with communication and self-expression serve as a metaphor for the more existential or emotional issues the other characters have with their own attempts to make themselves seen, heard, and known. Singer’s fundamental inability to communicate easily with his fellow townspeople renders him a tragic figure. Indeed, when Antonopoulos eventually dies and Singer realizes the breadth of the struggle still ahead of him just to have an ordinary conversation with another person, he takes his own life.

Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland is another character whose profound struggles with communication and self-expression render him tragic, isolated, and doomed to never truly be understood. Doctor Copeland is a black doctor who has affected, over the course of his life, a formal and precise way of speaking. Doctor Copeland uses clipped, direct sentences and formal grammar, and he never uses contractions or slang—a speech pattern which stands in stark contrast to both the vernacular used by the black characters in the book and the casual, sometimes coarse speech of its white characters. Over the course of the novel, as Doctor Copeland’s dreams of uniting his people under Marxist values and revolutionary action become clearer, so too does his reason for speaking in the isolating way he does. Doctor Copeland knows how racist the society in which he lives really is, and his formal speech reflects his desire to prove his worth and capability as a leader. Doctor Copeland has internalized a kind of self-hatred—even as he claims that it’s white men he hates—and disdains the slang words and unrefined speech his patients, friends, and even his own children use. Doctor Copeland wants to prove his intelligence and show that he can communicate with anyone—but his insistence on certain ways of speaking and expressing himself ultimately ends up alienating him from the very people he longs to grow closer to and build a community with, including his own children.

Doctor Copeland, the teenage tomboy Mick Kelly, the drunk communist Jake Blount, and the lonely barkeep Biff Brannon pay regular visits to Singer—visits during which they talk at him constantly, unloading their sorrows and venting their frustrations in spite of their knowledge that the interactions are unequal and unfair. Through these one-sided conversations, McCullers examines their deeper failures of self-expression and communication. Doctor Copeland wants to find a way to rally and unite the members of the black community; Mick wants to become a musician and express herself by writing great symphonies, but her family’s poverty precludes her from owning an instrument or taking lessons; Blount has powerful revolutionary ideals, but his alcoholism prevents him from expressing them articulately; Biff is wrestling with his grief over the recent death of his wife and his longing for a family, but doesn’t know how to reach out to other people and build the connections necessary to start again. All of the novel’s central characters are united by loneliness, to be sure—but their failures to communicate their fears, needs, and hopes is yet another force which binds these unlikely souls together. None of them is, ultimately, ever able to express themselves the way they want—or, if they are granted a moment of connection or transcendence, that moment proves fleeting. McCullers highlights not just the internal loneliness of these characters but also their outward-facing failures to communicate that loneliness, in order to metaphorically suggest the impossibility of ever truly, fully knowing another person—and of making oneself known in that same way. 

From Mick’s thwarted music career (the failure of which mirrors McCullers’s own failures as a musician) to Doctor Copeland’s inability to educate or mobilize his community to Singer’s own despair over the practical difficulties of communication, McCullers’s novel is populated by individuals who find themselves unable to express their deepest fears, desires, and dreams. McCullers’s characters’ collective failure to express themselves—linguistically, artistically, politically, and otherwise—seems to suggest that attempts to make oneself understood to others are doomed endeavors.

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Communication and Self-Expression Quotes in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Below you will find the important quotes in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter related to the theme of Communication and Self-Expression.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

The next week was full of feverish activity. He talked and talked. And although his hands never paused to rest he could not tell all that he had to say. He wanted to talk to Antonapoulos of all the thoughts that had ever been in his mind and heart, but there was not time. His gray eyes glittered and his quick, intelligent face expressed great strain. Antonapoulos watched him drowsily, and his friend did not know just what he really understood.

Related Characters: John Singer, Spiros Antonapoulos
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 2 Quotes

In some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons—throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.

Related Characters: Bartholomew “Biff” Brannon, Jake Blount
Page Number: 32-33
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 3 Quotes

What would Portia say if she knew that always there had been one person after another? And every time it was like some part of her would bust in a hundred pieces. […]

Mick sat on the steps a long time. […] Her face felt like it was scattered in pieces and she could not keep it straight. The feeling was a whole lot worse than being hungry for dinner, yet it was like that. I want—I want—I want—was all that she could think about—but just what this real want was she did not know.

Related Characters: Mick Kelly, Portia
Page Number: 52
Explanation and Analysis:

[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.

Related Characters: John Singer, Mick Kelly
Related Symbols: Music
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 4 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: John Singer, Jake Blount
Related Symbols: Music
Page Number: 64
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 5 Quotes

“A person can’t pick up they children and just squeeze them to which-a-way they wants them to be. Whether it hurt them or not. Whether it right or wrong. You done tried that hard as any man could try. And now I the only one of us that would come in this here house and sit with you like this.”

Related Characters: Portia (speaker), Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1, Chapter 6 Quotes

Singer was always the same to everyone. He sat in a straight chair by the window with his hands stuffed tight into his pockets, and nodded or smiled to show his guests that he understood.

Related Characters: John Singer, Mick Kelly, Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland, Bartholomew “Biff” Brannon, Jake Blount
Page Number: 92
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Mick Kelly
Related Symbols: Music
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 2 Quotes

“I go around,” Blount said. He leaned earnestly across the table and kept his eyes on the mute’s face. “I go all around and try to tell them. And they laugh. I can’t make them understand anything. No matter what I say I can’t seem to make them see the truth.”

Singer nodded… […] His dinner had got cold because he couldn’t look down to eat, but he was so polite that he let Blount go on talking.

Related Characters: Jake Blount (speaker), John Singer, Bartholomew “Biff” Brannon
Page Number: 131
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 5 Quotes

[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.

Related Characters: John Singer, Mick Kelly
Related Symbols: Music
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 6 Quotes

“And we are not alone in this slavery. There are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and creeds. […] The people in this town living by the river who work in the mills. People who are almost as much in need as we are ourselves. This hatred is a great evil, and no good can ever come from it. We must remember the words of Karl Marx and see the truth according to his teachings. The injustice of need must bring us all together and not separate us.” […]

Doctor Copeland loosened the collar of his shirt, for in his throat there was a choked feeling. The grievous love he felt within him was too much.

Related Characters: Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland (speaker)
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 7 Quotes

During the moonlit January nights Singer continued to walk about the streets of town each evening when he was not engaged. The rumors about him grew bolder. […] The rich thought that he was rich and the poor considered him a poor man like themselves. And as there was no way to disprove these rumors they grew marvelous and very real. Each man described the mute as he wished him to be.

Related Characters: John Singer
Page Number: 223
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 10 Quotes

“They hollered there for three days and three nights and nobody come.”

“I am deaf,” said Doctor Copeland. “I cannot understand.”

“They put our Willie and them boys in this here ice-cold room. There were a rope hanging down from the ceiling. They taken their shoes off and tied their bare feets to this rope […] and their feets swolled up and they struggle on the floor and holler out. […] Their feets swolled up and they hollered for three nights and three days. And nobody come.”

Doctor Copeland pressed his head with his hands, but still the steady trembling would not stop. “I cannot hear what you say.”

Related Characters: Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland (speaker), Portia (speaker), William “Willie” Copeland, Buster Johnson
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:

The next morning the sun came out. The strange Southern winter was at its end. Doctor Copeland was released. A little group waited outside the jail for him. Mr. Singer was there. Portia and Highboy and Marshall Nicolls were present also. Their faces were confused and he could not see them clearly. The sun was very bright.

“Father, don’t you know that ain’t no way to help out Willie? Messing around at a white folks’ courthouse? Best thing us can do is keep our mouth shut and wait.”

Related Characters: Portia (speaker), John Singer, Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland, William “Willie” Copeland, Highboy, Marshall Nicolls
Page Number: 263
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 13 Quotes

“This the way it is,” Willie said. “I feel like my feets is still hurting. I got this here terrible misery down in my toes. Yet the hurt in my feets is down where my feets should be if they were on my l-l-legs. And not where my feets is now. It a hard thing to understand. My feets hurt me so bad all the time and I don’t know where they is. They never given them back to me. They s-somewhere more than a hundred m-miles from here.”

Related Characters: William “Willie” Copeland (speaker), John Singer, Jake Blount
Page Number: 289
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 15 Quotes

There were three mutes inside and they were talking with their hands together. […] There was a certain brotherly resemblance between them.

Singer went inside. For a moment he had trouble taking his hand from his pocket. Then clumsily he formed a word of greeting. He was clapped on the shoulder. A cold drink was ordered. They surrounded him and the fingers of their hands shot out like pistons as they questioned him.

He told his own name and the name of the town where he lived. After that he could think of nothing else to tell about himself. He asked if they knew Spiros Antonapoulos. They did not know him. Singer stood with his hands dangling loose. […] He was so listless and cold that the three mutes in the bowler hats looked at him queerly. After a while they left him out of their conversation.

Related Characters: John Singer, Spiros Antonapoulos
Page Number: 325
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3, Chapter 3 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Mick Kelly
Related Symbols: Music
Page Number: 353
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3, Chapter 4 Quotes

And why? What was the reason for keeping the place open all through the night when every other cafe in the town was closed? He was often asked that question and could never speak the answer out in words.

Related Characters: Bartholomew “Biff” Brannon
Page Number: 356
Explanation and Analysis: