James Baquet

    No. 17 on our list of “The 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century” is also by a woman. When Virginia Woolf wrote “To the Lighthouse,” she was around 45. Carson McCullers was 23 — about half her age — when “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” was published in 1940.

    It was, of course, her debut novel. Three more, and numerous short stories, plays, and poems, followed. Reflecting her training in music, she conceived of the novel as a musical composition. She described it to her publisher as being about “five isolated, lonely people in their search for expression and spiritual integration with something greater than themselves.”

    Sometimes compared to other southern women writers — such as Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Katharine Anne Porter — McCullers once described writing as her “search for God.”

    The unusual title actually comes from a poem, “The Lonely Hunter,” by Fiona MacLeod (a female pseudonym for a man named William Sharp). The last lines of the poem are:

    Here in the heart of summer, sweet is life to me still,

    But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

    Underscoring the sense of loneliness and isolation, McCullers makes her main protagonist a deaf-mute, John Singer. He rooms with another deaf-mute, Spiros Antonapoulous, in a small town in the state of Georgia in the 1930s. Spiros goes insane, and is taken off to an asylum, increasing Singer’s loneliness.

    He then interacts with four other people throughout the book, each representing a “type”: Mick is a girl, but as her name indicates, she is something of a tomboy; Jake is an alcoholic trouble-maker; Biff owns a diner, where he watches the behavior of others carefully; and Benedict is a black doctor with high ideals.

    Each of these characters finds in Singer a confidante — ironically, as he is deaf. None of them notices that he has not really responded to what they’ve said, or shown any sign of really understanding. In the end, each is ultimately dissatisfied with the outcome of his or her quest.

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. girl who acts like a boy

    2. separated, alone

    3. one cannot hear or speak

    4. answered, replied

    5. premiere, first

    6. thought (of), created

    7. coming together of minds and hearts

    8. shows, reveals

    9. low-class restaurant

    10. one you can tell your secrets to