SOURCE: "God and No God in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," in South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. LVI, No. 4, Autumn, 1957, pp. 494-99.

In the following essay, Durham discusses the plot of The Heart of a Lonely Hunter, praising the allegorical aspects of the novel and its rebellion against religion and tradition.

That The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is to be interpreted on more than one level of meaning is undeniable. Carson McCullers herself has called her first novel a "parable in modern form"; and, while reviewers do not take very seriously her statement as to the meaning of this parable, practically every one realizes the importance of symbolism in the book. One critic even went so far as to write that "Carson McCullers is ultimately the artist functioning at the very loftiest symbolic level …"

If, then, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is symbolic, what exactly is...