Samadrita's Reviews > The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Let's get this out of the way. Garima, Dolors and Aubrey's gorgeously written tributes to the spirit of this American classic have pretty much made the task of composing additional paeans unnecessary. So my review is only going to be a shoddily-disguised justification for upgrading an initial 4-star rating to a deserving 5-star one. No I didn't choose to accord that previously withheld star bowing to a monster named 'peer pressure'.

The actual worth of a work of literature can be measured by the power it wields over a reader once the last page has been turned. And this is exactly that kind of narrative which refuses to let go even after you have managed to extricate yourself from its emotional chokehold. I had believed the specter of oppressive gloom to be well and truly exorcized once I closed the book a few days ago, comfortable in the certainty that other pending items on the to-read list will monopolize my attention soon. And yet that didn't happen. As much as I appreciated falling under the spell of Shirley Jackson's dark and disqueting 'Hill House' or revelled in Erica Jong's tongue-in-cheek brazenness, a sort of inexplicable wistfulness came over me last night. I longed for the tedium of that nameless, ramshackle town in the deep south and that familiar all-consuming sense of doom shared by its inhabitants. I craved once again to listen to the conflicted inner voices of the forlorn quartet who sought to purge the spiritual turmoil brewing within them through the companionable silence of a kindred spirit.

"She wondered what kind of music he heard in his mind that his ears couldn't hear. Nobody knew. And what kind of things he would say if he could talk. Nobody knew that either."

The hauntingly plaintive notes of their emotional desolation reach me no more; the dirge has played itself over after all. But their untameable restlessness has seeped into my being unknowingly. I resent this inability to wrench myself away from the world of Mick Kelly, Biff Brannon, Jake Blount, Doctor Copeland and John Singer. I cherish it at the same time. And I want to live in exile in the company of these solitary outcasts, perpetually engaged in the futile quest of disentangling the mess of existence.

There are layers upon layers to this book that reveal themselves once the post-reading rumination phase begins. At the time of its publication, the deep south was carving out an existence around a kind of fragile status quo almost in the same manner as South Africa under Apartheid was. My mind still fresh from MLK's autobiography, thus, Doctor Copeland's unwavering faith in a 'strong, true purpose' appeared as a kind of foreshadowing of the rise of a Martin Luther King a decade and a half later, a veritable leader fated to help instill a fierce sense of self-esteem in the members of a disinherited community and consequently save an entire nation from a dangerous identity crisis. McCullers's depiction of race relations is imbued with a kind of subliminal prophetic certainty that the already tottering edifice of discrimination and injustice cannot possibly stand for long.

"For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice." - Virginia Woolf

And the above quote from A Room of One's Own is the final and most definitive reason for awarding this enduring classic 5 stars. It's not just McCullers's voice which rings out in mournful solidarity with the disaffection and thwarted aspirations of the central characters in this novel. Rather it's the imperfectly harmonized chorus of voices of an entire generation belting out a sombre refrain and asking for release, for freedom from countless indignities, for the assurance of a life worth living.

"...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. Between two worlds he was suspended."

The lonely hunters may have bid me farewell already but they have shared with me their wisdom and courage and taught me the language of their despair and feeble hope. Herefrom I draw my solace.