“To thine own self be true” a father councils his son, in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet. We’ve been hearing that advice ever
since. The problem is that people don’t
always know where to find their own self.
In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,
McCullers gives a few hints as to how that self can be found.
In this novel, several characters are hunting
for something, and they believe they find that something in the heart of Mr.
Singer, a man who can neither hear what they’re saying, nor respond easily to
their written word. As disparate as
these characters are, they each find what they are looking for in his
compassionate eyes, which they believe reflect the windows to his soul. In the same way that these characters look to
Mr. Singer for their ideals, Mr. Singer places a fellow on a pedestal, and this
fellow is far less attentive and compassionate than anyone in the novel. It’s up to you to discover why these
characters look to Mr. Singer for guidance, and why he depends on his mentally
disabled friend for companionship.
This
is a challenging novel, published in 1940, when McCullers was a young
woman. This novel covers every sociologically
important event of that time: racism, poverty, sexism, homosexuality, ableism,
ethnocentricity, egocentricity, socialism, communism, pretty much the
works. Yet the novel holds together
tightly, and is also an interesting portal into America in the late 1930s, a
time when children had far greater freedom and responsibilities than we can
imagine today. Consider the scene where
the young girl, Mick, climbs a rickety ladder onto the roof of a tall house
under construction to smoke her early morning cigarette, dizzily contending
with the heights and wobbling back down the ladder to resume taking care of the
infant and toddler waiting for her down below.
Children in the western world don’t have permission to go to the park by
themselves, let alone to wander through construction sites, much less with
their infant siblings in tow, unless they are very poor. Money is an issue in Mick’s family, which is
why Mr. Singer boards in their home.
Despite the frequently callous treatment that many
characters dish out to one another, there is still a core of decency in each
one, and that decency is often acted on.
Not only can this novel teach compassion, it may also be therapeutic for
you if you spend time considering what it is that the heart is truly hunting. 
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