The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCuller

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCuller

In Carson McCuller’s novel, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, the main theme is isolation and a search for some connection to be normal. McCuller’s traces the lives of five characters that center their lives around one main character named John Singer, a deaf-mute. These characters are representative of all people and not just their specific characters in the novel. McCuller’s is characterized as a Southern-Gothic writer, and was known for her depiction of lonely characters, as well as carefully describing the sexual alienation of their desolate lives. This novel was considered one of McCuller's best works, and it certainly reflects the strange beauty and the encoded messages that she was so well known for. In The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, one theme that particularly stands out is the gay love between John Singer and Spiros Antonopoulos, as well as homosexuality within the other characters personas. The fact that the two subjects are deaf and mute, the events that take place throughout the novel and the hidden language within the writing, all lead the reader to believe that a message is being sent and that message is that John Singer has a homosexual love for S. Antonopoulos. Although it is never obvious that the novel is gay or lesbian, characters like the tomboy, Mick, the sensitive Biff Brannon as well as John Singer himself, offers a resistance to the social ideal of heterosexuality.

When the novel The Heart is A Lonely Hunter was first published in 1940, same sex relationships were extremely taboo. Gay content was often coded in books and movies during this time period and never expressed openly. Gay's were considered crazy and outcasts and as the story goes, Antonopoulos, John Singer's, Greek, male companion who he desperately loved, was sent to a mental hospital after he went insane at the beginning of the novel. Singer was very upset that his friend was taken from him. From the first pages of the novel, one can assume that Singer and Antonopoulos are two lovers: "Every morning the two friends walked silently together until they reached the fruit and candy store..." The symbolism in the way the two are deaf and mute can symbolize many things but the way that they walked silently until they reached the fruit and candy story implies that these two are hiding something. The word "fruit" also is sl...

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...ferent man and immediately the name was changed. The symbolism in this novel is so deep and complex that one cannot understand where its origins are, not even the writer. They erupt more so as an emotion than a thought and the McCullers wrote that when she is writing about a character she becomes that character. When writing about a Negro doctor, she becomes that Negro doctor and when writing about a homosexual man she becomes that homosexual man. As with the case of John Singer, maybe the emotional eruption that McCullers had while writing each character made John Singer’s love for Spiros Antonopoulos the homosexual one we perceive today.

When studying the characters in the novel The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCuller’s it is easy to conclude that there is a homosexual innuendo following some of the characters. The most obvious being the deaf-mute John Singer. The symbolism, language, the time period the novel was written as well as the events that take place throughout the novel all lead the reader to identify one of the themes as the homosexual love that John Singer has for his friend Spiros Antonopoulos and the spiritual isolation that each character suffers.