by Nancy Boland

Created on: July 16, 2009   Last Updated: July 19, 2009

"Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them."

Imagine for a moment what it's like to be a deaf-mute separated from the only friend you have, isolated and unable to communicate. It cannot be done, not well anyway. Not unless you've experienced it, yourself. But Carson McCullers penned down a haunting novel which comes very close to experiencing the isolation and segregation coupled with the outrageous ways in which people treat each other, and what for? Because one slightly wavers from the societal "norm" than the other...

I had a hard time with this one, with finding the right words. It's a book which had a profound impact on me, for one reason or another, and on many others.

Each character is longing for something. Each character is to some extent, suffering with delusion. Each character is isolated. Yet all of them are so similar, similar in their suffering, yet still so entirely different. John Singer cannot communicate with people because he cannot speak. Mick Kelly cannot communicate with anyone because her family do not share her ambition. Biff Brannon is left alone when his wife dies and Dr Copeland is isolated from his family and other black people in the community because of his intelligence and opinionated viewpoints. Similarly, Jake Blout is alone in his radical social notions and this only detaches him further. All it seems are interlocked in some incomprehensible secret suffering.

Carson McCullers book is often labelled as a classic, but having read it, I prefer the term "unforgettable".

Yes, we have all supposedly moved onto a better time. There is hope. The character of John Singer also reminds us that there are kind, generous people out there, lending an ear to fellow human beings when they are most afraid of going unheard.

But prejudice still roams, loneliness has not ceased and the frailty of the human spirit is always at stake - because of the way we treat each other. That is why 'The heart is a lonely hunter' is unforgettable to me, why I agree it should be required reading for anyone. Segregation, isolation and inclusion are not conditions of the past alone, they are in our present and they will be in our future.

All the characters feel profoundly alone in some sense or another, and all of them desperately need to communicate their feelings with someone who understands them. All five, bar Biff, confide in Singer the things that trouble them. McCullers explores the idea that all people feel a need to create some sort of guiding principle or god. Singer becomes this figure for the main characters of the novel; they believe he has endless wisdom about many things and they turn to him in times of turmoil, always asking him to help them accomplish their goals and comfort them during times of doubt.

They each create a different idol in Singer. For Mick, he is a man who feels similarly about music as she does. For Doctor Copeland, he is the only white man who understands his passion to achieve justice for black people. Blout finds that Singer is just as deeply concerned about socialism as he is and for Biff, he represents all that Biff sees in himself; a quiet, shrewd spectator of the human state. In reality Singer is none of these things but he provides a wordless objectivity, in a world of conflict and oppression, in which they trust, will bring them peace.

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