Carson McCullers' Dark Love

Carson McCullers was a well-known writer who came from the South; she became famous overnight after she wrote her first book: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. She wrote many different types of books during her lifetime, with over a dozen books and numerous essays, most of them often touched on the topic of love. Though she wrote about love, it was the typical type of love that you’d expect such as romanticism, but rather, it was the dark type of love (Source 4). Many critics might question why she chose to write those dark and gloomy books; it was because of her love-struggling life that she endured. She met her husband, got married then divorced. At this moment, she was going through too much pain in life. This was when she wrote her first book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which gained her overnight fame among the literature community. She often met new and interesting people in her life, which inspired her to write her novels in such a unique way. After the death of her husband due to a suicidal act, her life was starting to crumble down. With health issues from her habits and inheritance, her life was not wel; this eventually led to her death when she reached the age of fifty in 1967. In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers portrayed her characters similar to her personal life (Source 5), the people that she met (Source 3), and her personal feelings.

“Lula Carson Smith (Carson McCullers) was born in Columbus, Georgia, the daughter of a well-to-do watchmaker and jeweler of French Huguenot extraction.” (Source 1) Despite the fact that she came from a well-known family, she lived in a middle class environment. She did not see her parents much in her childhood because they were often drowned in the amount of workload pro...

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...many of her books were dark and gloomy, but they all make the reader appreciate the love that’s currently surrounding them.

Source 1

Liukkonen, Petri, and Ari Pesonen. "Carson McCullers." Www.kirjasto.sci.fi. Web. 04 Mar. 2010. .

Source 2

Bloom, Harold. Carson McCullers. New York, NY: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009. Print.

Source 3

Cook, Richard M. Carson McCullers. New York: Ungar, 1975. Print.

Source 4

Novels for Students. Presenting Analysis, Context and Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels. Detroit, MI: Gale Group, 1999. Print.

Source 5

Glossbrenner, Alfred, and Emily Glossbrenner. About the Author the Passionate Reader's Guide to the Author You Love, including Things You Never Knew, Juicy Bits You'll Want to Know, and Hundreds of Ideas for What to Read next. San Diego: Cader, 2000. Print.