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Carson McCullers: Life and Biography
Carson McCullers is an American writer born in 1917 in Georgia and she died aged 50 in 1967 in New York. Aged ten she started playing the piano and her father, who was a jeweller, offered her a typewriter at fifteen enticing her into writing short stories. After graduating at Columbus High School in Georgia she planned to study music at Juilliard School in New York, but circumstances made her change her mind. She studied creative writing instead and began a soon successful writing career. She published Wunderkind in 1936.
Personal Life and Relationships
At age 20 she married Reeves McCullers who intended himself to become a writer. Their relationship was complex as he was dishonest to her which led to a divorce nevertheless they remarried in 1945. Her love life was scattered and she experienced unrequited love with women.
Health Struggles
She suffered from a very bad health which began to decline when she fell ill with rheumatic fever in her late teens. From then on she had repeated strokes which incapacitated her temporarily and finally confined her to a wheelchair.
Literary Themes and Style
Her first work was autobiographical and then her favourite topic was the inner lives of lonely people she identified to, she said “I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen”. Lots of her fictional characters endure physical or psychological disabilities looking for compassion.
Major Works
Her most famous works are
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
- Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941)
- The Member of the Wedding (1946)
- The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951)
- Clock Without Hands (1961)
Her works are often known thanks to their film adaptations. She also wrote dramas such as The Square Root of Wonderful (1958) and The Member of the Wedding (1950), a play adapted from her 1946 novel.
Analysis of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a novel that depicts several characters living in a small town in the Deep South and struggling to find their place in society through their connection to others and to find love. The author represents herself as a lonely suffering character. She is embodied by a teenage girl, Mick Kelly, who has a passion for music.
Main Characters
- John Singer a deaf-mute silver engraver
- Biff Brannon the owner of a café and a quiet and weird character married to Alice whom he doesn't love anymore
- Dr Copeland a noble character devoted to the black community he belongs to
- Jake Blount a revolted socialist agitator
Narrative Structure
The coming-of-age novel adopts a third person omniscient narrator with various tones depending on which character is the focus. The climax is reached with John Singer's suicide. The film called The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was released in 1968, too late for the author who died in 1967.
