SOURCE: Cook, Richard M. “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” In Carson McCullers, pp. 19-45. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1975.

In the following essay, Cook offers a thematic and stylistic examination of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

I want—I want—I want—was all that she could think about—but just what this real want was she did not know.

—The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers published her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, in the spring of 1940, when she was just twenty-three years old. With its publication McCullers first gave full expression to a concern that was to be the basis of almost everything she would write—a concern for man's “spiritual isolation,” his revolt against that isolation and his need to achieve a perfect communion with others.¹ She also introduced in this first novel that particular type of character...