The Inescapable Dilemma

As one of the most prominent American Southern women writers of the twentieth century, Carson McCullers writes four novels, one novella, two plays, twenty short stories and many essays and verses. Among them, her most representative ones are The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, and The Member of the Wedding.McCullers is noted for her profound insight into and unique presentation of the theme of loneliness. Throughout all her works, she presents the same theme:human beings are locked into the solitary state forever in society; however hard people try to shake off loneliness at all costs, at last they only find that all their efforts prove to be in vain. The theme is very clear in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. The whole story shows that mutual-understanding is impossible. The Member of the Wedding presents the same theme through another aspect. It portrays the twelve-year-old girl Frankie's suffering of loss of belonging and her strong desire to shake off loneliness. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe portrays the absurdness of love in the form of a parable. It presents readers that even the omniscient love is incapable of breaking through the eternal loneliness. By depicting the love tragedy, McCullers deepens the theme of loneliness.By analyzing McCullers's three main works through close reading, this thesis studies the theme of loneliness elaborated in her works. Combining her life experiences and the influence of both literary tradition and the South, this thesis explains the root causes of loneliness. It can be the result of loss of personal identity, incapacity of communication, modern civilization, racial discrimination and crisis of belief. As God, love and family affinity can not take the root of loneliness away, loneliness is an inevitable end of the human beings.