The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
“He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house. He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live. He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat. He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted. He sees war coming. 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.”
Synopsis (Goodreads):
Carson McCullers’ prodigious first novel was published to instant acclaim when she was just twenty-three. Set in a small town in the middle of the deep South, it is the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and a disparate group of people who are drawn towards his kind, sympathetic nature. The owner of the café where Singer eats every day, a young girl desperate to grow up, an angry drunkard, a frustrated black doctor: each pours their heart out to Singer, their silent confidant, and he in turn changes their disenchanted lives in ways they could never imagine.
Review:
This book shattered me but has easily become one of my all-time favorites. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was published in 1940 and deals with both race and class in a small town, painting an eerie depiction of poverty and oppression that's still relevant today. The narrative revolves around multiple characters, but they all focus on a deaf man named John Singer. Many of the characters unload their problems on Singer because he patiently listens to their woes and worries without communicating his own.
What drew me to McCullers' novel is her ability to grant voices to those too often unseen and unheard - even by people living within the same community and experiencing similar economic and social issues. Every character has something they want but cannot fully attain due to a lack of resources. They are despotic and accept their cruel reality. Characters such as Doctor Copeland and Jake Blount desperately try to get others to listen, imploring them to do something about their position collectively, but to no avail.
McCullers provides a bleak reality of a community of people who have nowhere to go and are limited in a thousand ways. There is a lot to unpack within the book, but I highly recommend reading it.