An Interpretation Of Carson Mccullers’s The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter From The Perspective Of Modernism

Carson McCullers is one of the significant Southern women writers in the twentieth---century American literary history. In1940, at the very age of23, she published her maidennovel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter which was later ranked17thin Random House’s list of100Best English Fictions of the20thCentury. There were five main characters but the novel“pivots” on one, a marginalized deaf mute called John Singer. The other four “sang” to himthe songs they believed no one would listen to: Mick Kelly, a thirteen-year-old girl with musicdreams; a frustrated black doctor---Benedict Copeland---with dreams of racial uplift; JakeBlount, a haggard radical agitator and Biff Brannon, the cafe owner who is a thoughtfulobserver lacking passion for life.From the1950s, critics began to explore such a great work from various angles and withdifferent approaches. To some extent, McCullers studies over the past fifty years or so mostlyrepresent diverse critical efforts to resolve her myth of “spiritual isolation and loneliness”---the recurring theme of McCullers’s works. This thesis interprets the novel from theperspective of modernism. After the illustration of the core concept---modernism, the thesistakes Freud’s theory of melancholy and mourning and Seth Moglen’s two types of modernismas critical framework, and analyzes the leading characters. It finally comes to the conclusionthat under the background of modernist movement, modernity, especially capitalism is thecause of their affective crisis.The thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter includes the introduction ofCarson McCullers and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, literature review of the novel, and thesignificance of the study; The second chapter is the theoretical foundation. It first interpretsthe core concept of modernism from historical perspective and then the criticalframework---Freud’s theory of melancholy and mourning and Seth Moglen’s two types ofmodernism; Under the background of modernism and based on the theories above, the thirdchapter analyzes the main characters and points out the cause of their affectivecrisis---modernity. The fourth chapter solely interprets the character of Biff Brannon anddemonstrates his difference: he is the only one who does not fall into the affective crisis in thenovel. The fifth chapter draws a conclusion and shows a deep attachment between the noveland modernism: through Biff Brannon, the novel suggests that modernism provides theopportunity for future artistic movements---new modes of expression.