The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Loneliness is so central to McCullers’s exploration of self and community that she includes it in the title. The title from Scottish poet William Sharp’s poem “The Lonely Hunter,” in which a young woman mourning a lover considers joining him in death. The secondary characters in this novel project their loneliness onto John, falsely believing that he understands them because he possesses secret wisdom. They are mistaken because while John understands their words, he doesn’t understand the truth that is different for each person. John is not particularly insightful, unlike Biff, who is keenly observant of those around him. However, the characters do not believe that Biff has any special insight because they do not see him as an enigma. The characters seek John out when they need company, falsely believing that their beliefs about him mean that he comforts them from their loneliness. The pressures of these friendships have an adverse effect on John, who is ironically made lonelier because his so-called friends use him for their loneliness without considering how they can reach out to him and make him feel less alone. In featuring characters from diverse backgrounds who all suffer from loneliness, the novel is a larger social commentary about loneliness as a human condition. Each character is lonely in their own way, even though they also all have opportunities to find companionship.

Biff is alone though he is surrounded by customers and lives with his wife. When his wife passes away, Biff doesn’t miss her, but he does miss the presence she represented. This emphasizes that Biff never learned how to truly share his life with his late wife. His relationship with John is a coping mechanism rather than a real connection.

Mick is lonely though she is surrounded by family and boarders. Mick’s loneliness comes from her individual journey into young adulthood, which forces her to part with everything that she values. Mick loses her friendship with Bubber after he becomes George and retreats into silence, signifying his own coming of age, which happens tragically early. Mick is also lonely because of her musical intuition: Music speaks to her soul in ways people cannot, and she has no way to express this feeling to others.

Jake is lonely because he believes he is one of the only people in America who understands the evils and injustices of capitalism. However, Jake isolates himself because he antagonizes people and believes he is better than others, never making a real effort to get to know them. His nomadic lifestyle ensures that he will remain an outsider wherever he goes, a fact that he sees as part of his mission to educate the masses but that, in reality, is a way for him to escape accountability for his inability to follow through on the message he preaches.

Segregation and Jim Crow laws isolate Dr. Copeland, but he also struggles with loneliness because he pushes his family away with his strict ideology. Like Jake, Dr. Copeland sees himself as better than others; unlike Jake, Dr. Copeland practices what he preaches—education, integrity, and discipline—but to the extent that it alienates others. When Dr. Copeland is abused by the police, it is a wake-up call about what it means to be Black in America, and he joins the ranks of Black Americans whose humanity is stripped by institutions of white power. His growing identification with the Black community signifies hope, and his illness reunites him with the children, but these transformations do not settle Dr. Copeland’s sense of isolation and loneliness.

McCullers uses dreams as a symbol of loneliness. Mick has a reoccurring dream that she drowns in a sea of people. Jake has a recurring nightmare in which he carries a heavy basket atop his head but is so crowded by other people that he can’t lay his burden down. These dreams symbolize the psyche’s loneliness, the feeling that Mick and Jake are alone in the world even though they are surrounded by other people. McCullers also uses physical manifestations of loneliness, such as when John signs in his sleep and when Dr. Copeland struggles to breathe, which makes it difficult for him to articulate his thoughts and feelings.