"All Men Seek For Thee"-On The Interpretations Of "God" In The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers(1917-1967) is one of the prominent women writers in the American Southern literature.The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is one of her highly acclaimed novels which marks the beginning of McCullers's short but fruitful literary career.This novel inherits the themes of American Southern literature by emphasizing the concepts like family,religious belief,race and so on.What's more,it probes into the relationship among people and the connection between human and God with a strong sense of religion realistic solicitude,reflecting the individual's perplexity towards self-existence and reality that,in the American modern society people are indifferent to each other and the impossibility of communication.The success of this work not only lies in a global exploration of the abstract philosophical concept of solitude but the great efforts that Carson McCullers takes to discover the subtle relationship between human and God.There is never a constant relationship between human and God.The declaration of Nietzsche that "God is dead" results in the loss of belief in the entire western world which breaks the balance between God and sense that people have known for a long time.The death of God gives the selfhoods back to people,thus,the absolute solitude and helplessness turn into reality.The thesis re-scrutinizes this novel from the angles of religion and philosophy and mainly studies the relationship between human and God in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter as well as the ultimate influence that "the death of God" brings to the human in the hope of providing a new perspective to the research for this work.The thesis consists of five parts.Part one presents an introduction by pointing out the purpose and significance of this study and the relevant studies on this novel at home and abroad.Part two explains the religious background of the novel by presenting the American Southerners' general view about God and then emphasizing Carson McCullers's complicated attitude towards God due to the influence of Russian realistic literature,Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche.The third part is devoted to a detailed analysis of the image of God in the main characters' eyes,putting forward the basic argument that the "God" the disciples seek is nothing but a reflection of their own desires,which meets Carson McCullers's original motives in creating this novel.Chapter four elaborates on the reasons of the death of God and the influence it brings to human beings.Carson McCullers wants to tell us that the death of God is inevitable due to His powerlessness and people's failure to find salvation.Along with the death of God,people are plunged into a state of loss of belief.Meanwhile,it saves man from the government of God in their spirit,which gives the hope for men to re-evaluate themselves and frees their mind to start a new life.In the last part,a summary of the foregoing discussion is given.Apart from that,the author points out that although Carson McCullers gives a profound analysis about solitude,she doesn't point a way to lead people out of it.And the Carson McCullers's understanding of God makes The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter enrich and develop the Southem American literature in the religious theme.It is a reflection of the loss of human existence and difficult exploration of self-value,as well as a unique meditation upon the human's solitude situation.