The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories (1951) is a collection of short stories and a novella by Carson McCullers. The author, a seminal part of the Southern Gothic Literature genre, rose to fame with her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), which shares many themes with the stories in the collection. Other notable works by McCullers include the novels Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) and The Member of the Wedding (1946). 

The collection features the novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café,” which describes a doomed love triangle. It and the collection’s shorter stories, such as “The Jockey,” “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud,” and “A Domestic Dilemma,” examine The Mysteries of Love and Affection, Rejection of Gender Conformity, and The Detrimental Power of Loneliness. This collection also includes “Wunderkind,” McCullers’s first published story, written when she was 17. 

This guide refers to the 2005 paperback edition published by Mariner Books.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of child abuse, addiction, domestic violence, violence, racism, and antisemitism.

Language Note: This text uses the term “hunchback” to refer to a person with kyphosis, or severe curvature of the spine. The study guide reproduces this term only in quotations; elsewhere, it refers to spinal curvature. 

Plot Summaries

In “The Ballad of the Sad Café,” Miss Amelia is a young woman in a small, rural Southern town. Independent and willing to reject gender norms, she runs a successful store. Amelia falls in love with her cousin, Lymon, a short man with severe curvature of the spine, giving him gifts and pampering him through his poor health. Lymon loves interacting with the people in town, and in response, Amelia turns her store into a café, providing a new social space. The two live together for years, until the return of Amelia’s ex-husband, Marvin Macy, a morally corrupt criminal who seeks revenge against Amelia. Lymon takes a liking to Marvin, and Amelia grows jealous. When Marvin and Amelia get into a physical fight, Amelia is on the verge of winning when Lymon jumps on her back, turning the tide of the scuffle. Marvin and Lymon trash her store and leave town together. After their departure, Amelia, her heart broken, closes the café and withers away.

In “Wunderkind,” young Frances arrives at her piano instructor’s home for a lesson. She worries that her talent is fading. She is often referred to as a wunderkind, but in a recent recital, another student outshone her. When the lesson starts, Mr. Bilderbach, who sees Frances as a daughter, encourages her; however, although Frances hits the right keys, she cannot instill emotion into the music. She sees Mr. Bilderbach’s disappointment and panics, giving up and running from the house.

“The Jockey” takes place in a restaurant after a horse race. Jockey Bitsy Barlow confronts the horse owner, his trainer, and their bookie. Bitsy is resentful that these men show no sympathy for Bitsy’s friend, who was injured on the track. Bitsy struggles to understand how they can enjoy themselves when his best friend’s life has been changed forever.

In “Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland,” musician Madame Zilensky is a guest lecturer at Mr. Brook’s university. Madame Zilensky is odd, leaving her new house barely furnished and constantly telling outlandish stories, like one about seeing the King of Finland. Mr. Brook realizes she is lying, as there is no King of Finland. He confronts her, but upon seeing the distress on her face, he pretends to believe her. He realizes that she makes up stories to give her boring daily life some excitement.

In “The Sojourner,” after attending his father’s funeral, John Ferris realizes that he is aging and is anxious that he is wasting his life. He runs into his ex-wife Elizabeth, who invites him to her home, where he meets her new husband and their child. John realizes that he has an absence of love in his life. He returns to Europe, desperate to find meaning, and attempts to connect for the first time with the son of his European partner. He hugs the boy, hoping to produce a feeling of love that will slow down the flow of time.

In “A Domestic Dilemma,” Martin Meadows returns home after work to find his children alone and his wife, Emily, drunk in their room. Emily has struggled to adjust to life in New York after leaving the South. She drinks heavily, neglecting her duties as a parent, forcing Martin to take on a greater role. He leaves Emily in their room and makes the children dinner. When she comes down, he worries that she scares the children. After dinner, he gives the children a bath and helps his son pull out his loose tooth. He hopes that this will be what they remember, rather than their drunk mother. Martin finds Emily asleep in their bed. His anger at her evaporates, and he remembers his love for his wife.

The final story of the collection, “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud,” follows a young paper boy who stops in a local café during his morning paper route. In the café, he meets a strange man who tells the boy he loves him. The boy does not understand the man, but listens as he tells the boy about the woman he loved. Even after the man and the woman grew apart, the memories of her and their love haunted the man. As a reaction to this, the man tried to better understand love, approaching it scientifically. He began cultivating an ability to love anything and anyone. The boy is confused, too naïve and young to understand the man’s experiences.