"He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun -- the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it."
"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" is a gut punch of a novel, only made more powerful when you consider the themes explored despite being written in 1940 and the age of the author (23) at the time of publication.
Carson McCullers created an engrossing tale centering around a deaf-mute, John Singer, and his relationship to various characters in a textile town in Georgia.
"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."
McCullers excels at portraying enigmatic characters who become difficult for the reader to decide how to feel about. Mick, the tomboyish dreamer; Jake, the drunken labor agitator; Dr. Copeland, the Black doctor-activist with an estranged family; and Biff, owner of the local diner with complicated inner turmoil surrounding his sexuality and relationships with both sexes.
Despite the age in which the book is written, McCullers does not shy from massive themes that were taboo at the time: social activism, sexuality, race, and poverty. Perhaps due simply to her age, she takes them all on, while at the same time depicting perfectly those who pursue Henry David Thoreau's "lives of quiet desperation."
"We have no representatives in government. We have no vote. In all of this great country we are the most oppressed of all people. We cannot lift up our voices. Our tongues rot in our mouths from lack of use. Our hearts grow empty and lose strength for all purpose."
The result is a staggering story that is not for the fainthearted. "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" drags you along dusty streets and alleys to explore the toll of loneliness, the role of voice in societal stratification, and the heroism of the commonplace.
"There was hope in him, and soon perhaps the outline of his journey would take form."
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