Reflections – The Book Forum The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers Thoughts shared, expressed and reflected upon… A serious book read left a lot of the readers in our group kind of disappointed and asking for more positive and more of an uplifting experience. I had myself, penned down some thought provoking ideas which we discussed at length. Some excerpts from the Washington Post that throw light on the book and the author - "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" is a very good novel, though, and in one respect it is astonishing: McCullers began work on it when she was 20 years old and published it, in 1940, when she was 23. McCullers throughout her brief life -- she died in 1967 after a stroke -- was a troubled and troublesome woman. Some critics who are sympathetic to her, call her "sickly, paralyzed, alcoholic and depressed." She married Reeves McCullers, divorced him, then married him again. They couldn't stand to be together and they couldn't stand to be apart. Both were bisexual. They had no children, which can be taken as proof of heavenly mercy. She drank and smoked to excess, and could be argumentative, even bellicose. Yet in a writing career of barely three decades she produced five novels. Mick is the novel's protagonist, but its real center is Singer, a deaf-mute who works for a jeweler (McCullers's father ran a thriving jewelry shop) and becomes a Christ like presence in the imaginations of four people: Mick; Biff Brannon, proprietor of the New York Cafe; Jake Blount, a drifter, radical unionist and alcoholic; and Benedict Mady Copeland, a black doctor. Singer is somewhat unconvincingly attached (emotionally, not sexually) to another deaf-mute, Antonapoulos, who "excepting drinking and a certain solitary secret pleasure, . . . loved to eat more than anything else in the world." Soon Antonapoulos becomes imbalanced and is taken off to a mental institution and Singer is grief-stricken. In this and other important respects "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" is bleak -- but it is true to McCullers's own heart, which always ached to give and receive love even as it so rarely succeeded. I started the discussion with a simple question – what do you have to say about a fragment of the title “The heart is lonely…”? It was of course a sort of rhetorical question because we have all experienced this – the loneliness that we feel at some point in our lives. That our heart does feel alone at times of trials and we do know that we are born alone and will die alone – but what about the huge gap in between. Does it have to necessarily be a lonely journey? Do we fill our lives with friends, family, possessions, experiences, pursuits and routines with an end in mind? What are we really seeking to accomplish? What, as the eternal question goes – is the meaning of life? Then the aspect of ‘hunter’ – why is the ‘heart a lonely hunter’ – what is it hunting? And who really is the prey? The object that we hunt and so the prey - What is it that the lonely heart is seeking? A companion, a friend, someone to

standby us, someone who will listen to us, someone who will support us or be there through thick and thin – nonjudgmentally, unconditionally? Lot of people who feel alone, secluded or misunderstood feel what is eloquently put in the book by James Frey, A Million Little Pieces: “More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if I wasn't alone.” The next big question – Being heard Is good enough for our hearts and minds – is it affirmation that we seek? A friend who listens is the ultimate friend. And yes we all agreed to that. Because sometimes just the body language and the acknowledgement of what we are saying, that we are being heard can be enough to lift the spectre of gloom or desolation from our lives. And yes a friend who listens is a great friend and more so in todays world, is rare and precious. “Then there was the aspect that the five main characters - all of whom confided in this deaf and mute fellow Singer, who seemed to listen, but was he really listening? …Singer is grief-stricken but retains, in the eyes of those drawn to him, a mysterious allure: " People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things that no one else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human.” " Because he is mute -- a Christ without a voice, ironically named Singer -- he cannot communicate as intimately with others as they wish, but the emotions he arouses are powerful.” The ironical aspect of the story is that in the course of the book we realize that Singer is focusing intently on their faces to read their lips, and that he didn’t really understand where any of them were coming from, and actually didn’t like them very much. And the fact that all these five characters were portrayals of some sort of grotesque isolated and misunderstood individuals which exist in the marginal peripheries of every society and whose personality traits we love to ignore or wish away. In that way the book makes us see the humaneness of these lonely beings, cut away from mainstream yet trying to find or search for relevance in their lives just like any of us, but in the end of the book one realizes that they don’t actually find that ; and that was probably the reason the book left all of us feeling a bit sad. And in many ways that is the way McCullers probably viewed herself and was viewed by others – “Apart from her essentially unimportant personal shortcomings, McCullers was that true rarity, a born writer. She had to write, and it is reasonable to assume that she came up short in other aspects of her life because they simply didn't matter to her the way writing did. It is also reasonable to assume that she was haunted by memory so deep and acute that it pained her, and that she turned to alcohol as a release from it. That would make her scarcely the first writer, or artist, thus cursed, and blessed. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" obviously draws directly from personal experience. Right there, only 10 paragraphs into the book, we have the theme -- "the desperate look of hunger and of loneliness" -- that is central to the book and that preoccupied McCullers throughout her life. Mick Kelly, its principal character, "a gangling,

towheaded youngster, a girl of about twelve," is hungry and lonely and yearning for love, and is self-evidently McCullers herself.” Though we all felt the book was bleak, there are a few quotes that are not only very profound, but some of them could easily be the basis for deep discussions and so I am reproducing them below, with a few comments - “Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left behind does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or, perhaps when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved – so the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why?” “the way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear.” This probably refers to Singers deep dependence in his friend Antonapoulos who does not really care for him, but for some reason he is the anchor in Singer’s life and he is the one who provides meaning and relevance to Singer through his own lifetime. It also throws light on the fact that we all at every age look for relevance, for some reason to be. And basically most of us feel positively affirmed in nurturing others or being the reason in some one else’s life. Even when we do volunteer our services in kind, time or material goods we are actually seeking some sort of relevance for our being. So in some way the positive affirmation that we get through our actions is what we hunt for. “…the heart is a lonely hunter when there's no sign of love in sight!” Probably when outside oneself, and does not find it, that is really what makes it lonely. If we were to analyse this as our need to first and understand ourselves…maybe then loneliness is not what we would feel. “The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.” “I want - I want - I want - was all that she could think about - but just what this real want was she did not know.” Again, a big struggle for all of us. There are so many wants but if we clearly focus, then the want becomes a trivial pursuit and the journey to attain it is the real strife. “In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.” That was probably Singer’s personal journey… “And how can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?"

And yes, these profoundly disturbing, disconcerting, unsettling yet true words were written almost a century ago by a 20 some year old woman, who is searching, who probably remained a “lonely hunter” in her life, and who has immortalized her words and her world in her books. I read a passage from Oprah Winfrey’s book, “What I Know for Sure”, this provides a refreshing perspective which juxtaposes the ‘lonely’ outlook to life that was the thread in McCullers book. “In times of crisis, I’ve always marveled at the way people reach out with words of encouragement. I’ve had moments of real devastation in my life – we all have – but I’ve been sustained by the grace and love of friends who have asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?” Not knowing that they already have, just by asking. People I have known well and others I’ve never met have, in tough moments, built me a bridge of support. I’ll never forget when, after a particularly difficult setback a few years ago, my friend stopped by unexpectedly. “There’s something I came to tell you,” He said. And he started singing what he knows is my favourite spiritual: “I surrender all. I surrender all. All to thee my blessed Saviour, I surrender all.” I sat silently, closed my eyes, and opened myself to this gift of love and song. When he finished, I felt a release of all pressure. I was content to just be. And for the first time in weeks, I experienced pure peace. When I opened my eyes and wiped away the tears, he was beaming. He started laughing his huh, huh, huaugh laugh and gave me a big hug. “Girl,” He said, “I just came to remind you, you don’t have to carry this load all by yourself.” To know that people care about how you’re doing when the doing isn’t so good - that’s what love is. I feel blessed to know this for sure.”

Roohi Kapur