Literary Criticism
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"We'll have one last word about The South. The strangled South. The wasted South. The slavish South" (Hunter 254) says Jake Blount, a character in Carson McCullers' novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Virginia Spencer Carr writes that McCullers "viewed with distress the squalid conditions and pervading hopelessness among the people of the mill district" in her hometown of Columbus, Georgia and that she "had become increasingly aware of what she considered the weaknesses of her country's capitalistic system" (Carr 57). According to Carr, many of Carson McCullers' views are found in Hunter.
The book is a Marxist social critique of the South of the 1930s. McCullers extracts several broad ideas from the writing of Karl Marx and applies them to the unique situation in the southeastern United States. Ihab Hassan, in his article on McCullers, writes that McCullers follows the tradition of Southern novels because her book "is ...openly hostile to those popular assumptions the country entertains at large" (Hassan 205) . This is the Marxist idea of what a novel, as a work of art, should do. Hunter portrays oppressed classes of the South, such as blacks and women, describes the "fascist" ideology in which they live, and uses Marxist ideas about religion as a central theme.
In her outline for the novel, McCullers states that the main theme of the book is "man's revolt against his own inner isolation and his urge to express himself as fully as is possible" (Smith 124). Much of the musical imagery in the book reflects this theme. Singer's name implies that he is one who communicates with his voice. This is ironic, because he is in fact deaf and dumb. Mick Kelley wants to learn how to write music so she can put the musical motifs that fill her mind onto paper. McCullers explains in her outline that the novel is written in the form of a fugue -- a musical form in which one voice or instrument begins by playing a melody and is gradually joined by other voices (Smith 148). Janice Fuller elaborates on McCullers' explanation, stating that McCullers has created in each character an interesting motif or theme that can stand on its own (Fuller 57). Each character in the novel has something important to say -- a message that he or she has a profound need to communicate. The idea that authors or characters within literature have something to communicate is a Marxist idea.
For Karl Marx, literature and art are products of an artist's labor that show oppressed people a picture of where they stand in their society. A work should "describe the real mutual relations, break down conventional illusions about them . . . but not offer any definite solution . . ." (Eagleton 46) . McCullers' novel exposes the ideology of the South in the 1930s as one in which blacks, textile workers, and women are oppressed. It portrays their individual struggles without offering a solution to them.
"Typicality" of character is a Marxist concept used by McCullers in Hunter. Characters should, according to Marxist critics such as Terry Eagleton, "incarnate historical forces without ceasing to be richly individualized"(Eagleton 29) . However, this representation need not be "politically prescriptive" (Eagleton 44). McCullers has included characters who represent working- class white men (Blount and Singer), a generation coming of age (Mick and Harry), and a black man and woman (Copeland and Portia). Each of these people represents a social group in the South in the 1930s but still retains his/her individuality as a character of interest. Through lengthy third person omniscient passages, McCullers introduces the deepest motivations and personality traits of her characters that can inspire empathy and frustration. Readers delve into Mick's "inside room," Jake Blount's impassioned Marxist ideas, Biff Brannon's feminine longings, and the sad remembrances of Dr. Copeland. In shorter passages, in which characters interact, McCullers shows readers a society of people divided from each other by internal and external social forces: Dr. Copeland and his inability to communicate with his children or with Jake Blount, Mick's alienation from her family and peers, and Biff Brannon's objective viewing of all the characters as they come into his restaurant. All of the characters have, as Singer observes, "something they love more than eating or sleeping or wine or friendly company" (Hunter 183). Each needs detailed examination.
Jake Blount is a character representative of the working-class man in America. He is not content to take a job and work at it for a long period of time; instead he wanders the country, takes new jobs when he needs money, and goes on drinking binges. He is deeply angry and discontented with what he feels is a capitalistic society that keeps people oppressed by lying to them about what is really going on. He says to a group of mill workers sitting on their porch, "I got the Gospel in me" (Hunter 56). They tell him to go to the church, but he insists that he has "the real truth" in him: "The bastards who own these mills are millionaires. While the doffers and carders and all the people behind the machines who spin and weave the cloth can't hardly make enough to keep their guts quiet." He asks them, "don't it make you mad? don't it?" The men laugh at him and he goes on his way, angry and frustrated at their ignorance (Hunter 57) . His deepest need is to end their ignorance and inform people of the ideology in which they are living.
Another character in the book who embodies a social group is Dr. Copeland. He represents the Black-American man in the South. He tells the other black members of the community, "Negroes! we must arise and be whole again! We must be free!" (Hunter 164). This is a speech he makes at a Christmas gathering at which he is asked to speak. He mentions Jesus as an important historical figure, but then devotes the rest of his time to speaking of Karl Marx, whom he describes in religious terms. He calls Marx a "very wise man" and refers to his writing as his "commandments" (Hunter 160). Like Blount, Copeland has a message that he wants to give to his people because he feels a deep but almost violent love for them (Hunter 168).
At one point near the end of the novel, Copeland and Blount meet and discuss their similar feelings of frustration about society. Copeland's son, Willie, has been crippled while in jail by the heartless actions of racist guards. Blount hears of this and goes to talk to Willie and see if something can be done toward justice. He and Copeland discuss the failures of capitalism in the South. Jake calls it "The strangled South. The wasted South. The slavish south" ( Hunter 254). Copeland keeps reminding him about the special case of black people. He says, "so far as I and my people are concerned the south is fascist now and always has been"( Hunter 256). Both agree that the solution is to let people be freed from their ignorance: "The only solution is for people to know. Once they know the truth they can be oppressed no longer" ( Hunter 258). The two men are for a brief time communicating and sharing in meaningful conversation about the problems of their world.
Unfortunately, they fall into disagreement over how the message should be brought to the people. Copeland wants to lead demonstrations and dreams of a march on the capitol in Washington. Blount wants to write chain letters or take Willie around the country in a cart to demonstrate injustice (Hunter 258). The two men argue violently, forget their purpose, and eventually Copeland collapses into exhaustion and Blount runs from the room in fury. McCullers portrays racism in the South in the interactions of these characters. They demonstrate Marxist typicality and individuality of character. Copeland experiences the violence against his people and views their oppression with outrage. Blount is insensitive to the problems unique to black people, but realizes that something is dreadfully wrong with his world. More importantly, the two men show readers the ways in which the ideology of the South has made them who they are and kept them divided and powerless.
McCullers expands upon Marxist ideas about women when she portrays female characters. As a woman, McCullers surely noticed the lack of details about women's struggles in Marx's work. Marx writes in "The German Ideology" that "the first division of labor is that between man and woman for child breeding" ( Engels 739). He sees the traditional family as a "miniature [of] all the antagonisms which later develop on a wide scale within society and its state" (Engels 737). Engels writes on this idea in more detail, defining the male in a household as the "bourgeois" and the woman as the "proletariat." He says that "the modern individual family is based on the open or disguised domestic enslavement of women" (Engels 744). He describes the situation of women in capitalist society as one in which the woman is trapped. She can work in a factory to the detriment of her family, or she can remain at home with her children: unable to earn anything for herself.
In the character of Mick Kelley, McCullers departs from the writing of Marx. She demonstrates through Mick "the violent struggle of a gifted child to get what she needs from an unyielding environment" (Smith 127). Engels writes that women are trapped because they have both duties at home and the urge to be independent. He assumes a sense of duty on the part of a woman that McCullers' character does not have. Mick has dreams that far surpass Marx's and Engel's expectations for women. She wants to create music: write and conduct symphonies. She imagines herself as a world-famous composer, wearing "either a real man's evening suit or else a red dress spangled with rhinestones. The curtains of the stage would be red velvet and MK would be printed on them in gold" (Hunter 205). She longs to create and to be appreciated for the results.
Like Virginia Woolf, Mick feels the need for a "room of her own" or "inside room": "With her it was like there was (sic) two places - -the inside room and the outside room. School and family . . . were in the outside room. Mister Singer was in both rooms. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room. The songs she thought about were there. And the symphony" (Hunter 138). She climbs onto a rooftop, feeling the giddy freedom of height, only to be brought back down to earth by the responsibility of caring for her younger brothers (Hunter 28). Mick shows the young woman in the South the kinds of ideals that she can dream of and the struggles she will face in attempting to reach them.
The ideology in which Mick lives is conveyed to her through images of women as helpless victims of violence. For an impressionable girl like her, the effect of images such as Portia's helplessness in the face of racism and the shooting of Baby Wilson is profound. She has a dream in which she is being crushed as she struggles through her life, trying to move ahead, swimming against an overwhelming current of humanity ( Hunter 33). She draws pictures with titles like "Sea Gull with Back Broken in Storm" and "Boiler Bursts in Factory" that all show scenes of violence in which subjects are struggling against insurmountable forces that eventually destroy them (Hunter 37).
Describing the frustration and guilt that Mick feels, Louise Westling focuses on the scene in which Mick hears Beethoven's Eroica Symphony for the first time. Mick pounds her thighs with her fist and scrapes sharp rocks along the ground until her hands are bleeding: "There is no constructive outlet for the emotion stimulated by the music, an emotion identified with her ambitions and sense of her own importance. So she turns all the energy upon herself, wounding her flesh to blot out her emotions with physical pain" (Westling 116) . Mick wanders the streets of town in the deepest part of the night seeking a moment of escape from the reality that surrounds and discourages her.
Harry Minowitz, Mick's next door neighbor, longs to fight fascists in Germany (Hunter 212). Mick is ignorant of the world situation, but has keen insight into her own plight in the tiny world of her Southern town when she says, "A boy has a better advantage like that than a girl. I mean a boy can usually get some part-time job that don't take him out of school and leaves him time for other things. But there's no jobs like that for girls" (Hunter 210) . Mick summarizes Engel's remarks about women and foreshadows her situation at the end of the book. She says that she too would like to fight fascism, but realizes that she would have to disguise herself as a boy in order to do so (Hunter 209). Barbara White, in Growing up Female , points out that Harry Minowitz is a male counterpart to Mick and shows the relative freedom he experiences as opposed to Mick. After their confusing sexual experience, Harry leaves town and finds a job in another city. Mick can only long for this kind of freedom, as she is trapped in the town working full time to help support her family (Hunter 97) .
After Harry runs away, Mick is confronted by the isolation of her new status as a woman. She wants Portia or her mother to see that there is something different about her. But they each reaffirm the ideology of womanhood by telling her to give her brother a bath and to stop frowning because she has reached the age at which she should be concerned about her looks (Hunter 238). The failure of women to communicate with each other is similar to the inability of Blount and Copeland to resolve their differences despite the fact that they agree on a problem but not on a solution. An insidious facet of ideology as shown in McCullers' novel is that it alienates people from each other and themselves.
In the end, Mick leaves her "inside room" (Hunter 262) takes a job at a drugstore, and thus "It was like the inside room was locked away somewhere away from her. A very hard thing to understand" (Hunter 301). Mick has chosen what Marx would label independence, only to find that she has in fact sold her independence. Working for so many hours each day leaves her no time or energy to enter her "inside room" or pursue her musical ambitions. She has not chosen to become independent; she has surrendered to the ideology that denies her the opportunity to work toward a realization of her dreams. She feels that she has been "cheated," but she can not find a specific cause or party to blame (Hunter 302). She sees the ideology that she is trapped in like a shadow, but she can not see it clearly enough to escape it.
Despite her frustration, Mick continues to hope: "Maybe she would get a chance soon. Else what the hell good had it all been -- the way she felt about music and the plans she had made in the inside room? It had to be some good if anything made sense. . . It was some good. All right! OK!" (Hunter 302). It is ironic that earlier in the novel Mick remarks about strength being generated from one always having to fight for things (Hunter 141), and yet it is her strength, her ability to endure, that causes her employer to ask her to stay extra hours (Smith 130). But she still keeps her faith in herself and her ambitions: "She is defeated by society on all the main issues before she can even begin, but there is something in her. . . that can not and will not ever be destroyed" (Smith 131). In spite of the fact that all hope seems lost, Mick is left at the end of the book still struggling, trying to save money for a piano or travel. Perhaps she has had to fight so hard for what she wants that she has developed the strength to persevere.
It is the need to believe in something that endures , a God or a religion, that is a common trait in all the characters in Hunter, and it is the fundamental Marxist principle in the novel. Marx states that "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people"(Marx 54). The novel depicts the ways in which people employ an "opium" in order to deal with the bleak world in which they are living. Marx writes that man has "found in the fantastic reality of heaven where he sought a supernatural being, only his own reflection" (Marx 53). Copeland, Blount, and Mick all claim to find in Singer certain traits that they wish him to have. Many people in the town who have met Singer claim that he has certain traits that are important to them but that actually have no basis in reality (Hunter 170).
In her article "Black and White Christs in Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," Laurie Champion examines the idea of Singer as a Christ figure within a different context. She argues that the book includes social and religious issues together because McCullers offers both white and black Christ figures. Champion writes that the black Christ is persecuted more severely than the white Christ, but the significant point is that they are both crucified: "Spirituality, loneliness and human isolation "crucify" all members of society" (Champion 52). By taking this approach, Champion is able to point out ways in which the novel deals with social issues such as "the dangers of capitalism and the evils of racism" (Champion 48). She sees these themes as subordinate to the central theme of human isolation. From a Marxist point of view, these themes are not only equal in importance to that of isolation, but all three are interrelated.
Nancy Rich views the interpretation of Christ figures in the novel in an almost Marxist way. in her article "'The Ironic Parable of Facism' in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, "she asserts that there is a "probability that politics was a motivating factor in the genesis of the novel" (Rich 108). She cites the scene in the novel in which characters appear in a dream as a tableau, which many critics have interpreted as representing a religious hierarchy, and instead explains it in terms of a political hierarchy:
Antonopoulos kneeled at the top of [the] steps. He was naked and he fumbled with something that he held above his head and gazed at it as though in prayer. He [Singer] himself knelt halfway down the steps. He was naked and cold and he could not take his eyes from Antonopoulos and the thing he held above him. Behind him on the ground he felt the one with the
mustache [Blount] and the girl [Mick] and the black man [Copeland] and the last one [Brannon]. They knelt naked and kept their eyes on him. And behind them there were the uncounted crowds of kneeling people in the darkness (Hunter 185).
Rich takes McCullers' words "ironic parable of fascism" literally and applies them to the novel. She views Singer as a symbol of a government that is deaf to the people (Rich 110). She sees in this parable elements of a nineteenthth century debate about the redefinition of government. At the time when McCullers writes the novel, fascist government in Europe "denied liberty through force, American democracy denied liberty through default" (Rich 110). In the tableau passage, Rich sees the "something" that Antonopoulos is holding as the Constitution of the United States and points out that it is only a part of his dream and that in fact all of the people in the dream are trying to see it, but can not (Rich 113).
It is through the eyes of Biff Brannon that readers get a clearer picture of McCullers' intentions for Singer. Brannon is a capitalist : he owns the New York cafe. However, he is a capitalist who becomes aware of the struggles of the people he has observed: Blount, Copeland and Mick Kelley. He observes their relationship to Singer, the mute, and comments that all of them seem to make Singer into "a sort of home-made god" (Hunter 198) because they can attribute any characteristics to him that they wish him to have. They believe that he understands their deepest feelings when in fact he understands very little. Singer writes a letter to his friend Antonapoulos describing all four of his frequent visitors, and says that he does not understand Blount, that he can not understand why Mick assumes he knows about music since he is deaf, and that Dr. Copeland scares him (Hunter 183). From Brannon's perspective, readers of the novel see into the author's purpose: a clear picture of what the interrelationship of all the characters and Singer means.
Biff Brannon is often read as an androgynous character, because he has many feminine traits. He wants to adopt children, make clothes for them, and is told that he would have made a great mother (Hunter 196). After his wife's death he begins to wear her perfume, use lemon rinse in his hair, and redecorate the bedroom (Hunter 192). He reflects that "by nature all people are of both sexes" (Hunter 112). The significance of his androgyny is vital to an understanding of his character. Brannon is not caught in the social traps of gender. He can not be said to represent any typicality of character because he is neither male nor female. Instead he provides objective insight into McCullers' purpose. On the last page of the book his thoughts are described:
In a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who-one word-love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror"(Hunter 306)
Brannon becomes aware of the situation of the people he has seen in the cafe, and while he is moved by their strength and the deep love that motivates them, he is frightened by the apparent hopelessness of their struggle. He sees them yearning for a God and watches their disillusionment when Singer commits suicide. As he stands lost in thought, Brannon is caught in a vision as he looks into his own reflection in the counter top: "One eye was opened wider than the other. The left eye delved narrowly into the past while the right gazed wide and affrighted into a future of blackness, error and ruin" (Hunter 306). McCullers' language exposes the place where Brannon stands in the novel. He is on the outside edge of everything: gender, the lives of the characters, the beginning of a new day, and, most importantly, he is standing on the edge of history, between World War I and World War II, looking on from his perspective in the present. Fascism lurks in the background in a report on the radio about Hitler in Europe. But Brannon is lost in the insight before his mind's eye. He has realized the profound love of humanity that makes radicals such as Blount and Copeland so enraged, as well as the love of beauty and unyielding inner strength that sustains Mick into womanhood. Brannon's vision of fascism exists in the capitalistic system of the South and is silent and subtle. But there is a love within people that struggles against it, that passes on the hope for a new day that Brannon waits for. He can believe in its coming, because he has seen the struggle of the lonely hunters: those "who -- in one word -- love."
Carson McCullers creates a Marxist portrait of the Southern ideology. She demonstrates its insidious force and shows characters who are defeated by it and characters who have the strength to overcome it. In his review of the novel, Ben Ray Redman says that Hunter "does not end by putting a full-stop to thought and feeling, but leaves the reader busily pondering the author's intentions and meanings after the author's words have ceased" (Redman 6). In Marxist terms, this is the highest praise that a work can receive: that a story and characters speak from their place in history and demand that we look critically at our own ideology.
Works Cited
Carr, Virginia Spencer. The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson Mc Cullers. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1975.
Champion, Laurie. ÒBlack and White Christs in Carson McCullersÕs The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." The Southern Literary Journal 24. 1 (1991) 46-52.
Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley: U of California P, 1976
Engels, Friedrich. "The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State." The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C.Tucker. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1978. (734 - 759)
Fuller, Janice. ÒThe Conventions of Counterpoint and Fugue in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." The Mississippi Quarterly 41 ( 1987) :55 - 67.
Hassan, Ihab. ÒThe Aesthetics of Love and Pain .Ó Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. New York: Harper, 1961.
Marx, Karl. "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction." The Marx-Engels Reader. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1978. (53 - 65)
McCullers, Carson. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. New York: Bantam, 1983.
- - - The Mortgaged Heart. Ed. Margarita G. Smith. Boston: Houghton, 1971.
Rich, Nancy B. ÒÔThe Ironic Parable of FascismÕ in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.Ó The Southern Literary Journal 9.2 (1977): 108 - 123.
Redman, Ben Ray. ÒOf Human Loneliness.Ó Rev. of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. The Saturday Review of Literature 8 June1940
White, Barbara A. Growing Up Female. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood P, 1985.