Introduction
This was Carson McCullers’s first novel, published in 1940, when the author was just twenty-three years old. It started out as a short story in […]
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Carson Mccullers
McCullers was born Lulu Carson Smith on February 19, 1917, in Columbus, Georgia. Her family had deep roots in the South: her great-grandfather, Major John […]
Plot Summary
A Part One The first section of this novel has six chapters-one chapter focused on each of the five main characters, and then the sixth […]
Characters
A Spiros Antonapoulos Antonapoulos is the person that John Singer cares most about in the world, even though there is little evidence that he returned […]
Themes
A Strength and Weakness Very early in the book Biff Brannon announces to his wife, “I like freaks.” Her response is “I reckon you ought […]
Construction
A Grotesque The idea of the grotesque has run throughout American literature, through the works of Melville, Hawthorne and Poe, and may in fact have […]
Historical Perspective
A Fascism The character of Mick is so politically naive early in the novel that when she is defacing the wall of a house under […]
Compare and Contrast
1940: England and France were at war with Germany, Italy and Japan: later that year France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, and Romania fell […]