The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) is the debut novel by the American author Carson McCullers; she was 23 at the time of publication. It is about a deaf man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the US state of Georgia.
A. S. Knowles, Jr., author of "Six Bronze Petals and Two Red: Carson McCullers in the Forties," wrote that the book "still seems to capture [the author's] total sensibility more completely than her other works." Frederic I. Carpenter wrote in The English Journal that the novel "essentially [...] described the struggle of all these lonely people to come to terms with their world, to become members of their society, to find human love—in short, to become mature."
Title
The title comes from the poem "The Lonely Hunter" by the Scottish poet William Sharp, who used the pseudonym "Fiona MacLeod". "Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still, But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill."
Plot
The book begins with a focus on the relationship between two close friends, John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos, deaf people who have lived together for several years. Antonapoulos becomes mentally ill, misbehaves, and, despite attempts at intervention from Singer, is eventually put into an insane asylum away from town. Now alone, Singer moves into a new room.
The remainder of the narrative centers on the struggles of four of John Singer's acquaintances: Mick Kelly, a tomboy who loves music and dreams of buying a piano; Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator; Biff Brannon, the observant owner of a diner; and Dr. Benedict Mady Copeland, an idealistic physician.
Creation and conception
McCullers sought to create a novel about a character to whom other characters reveal their innermost secrets. Initially her main character was Jewish.
Characters
The scholar Nancy B. Rich stated that many of the supporting characters are only concerned about their own causes and never achieve a "clear voice" due to their lack of courtesy to one another. Rich also stated that most of the characters do not stand a chance at making meaningful changes towards the governing system.