The "Disabled" Characters Depicted By Carson Mccullers

At the age of 23, Carson McCullers, with her The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, emerged as a rising star of American literary circle and was titled the "Lonely Hunter". In McCullers’ every novel and novelette, there are the disabled figures who all play an important role in the works, which makes it safe to say that the disabled figures are the key of McCullers’ creation. This constitutes the distinctive feature of McCullers’ works in the history of literature.McCullers had her special reasons for creating disabled figures, which can be seen in the following aspects. The family influence and life experience:She lived in a family with many disabled members with whom her life had long been closely associated with and she has been showing great interests to and sympathy for the disabled persons and gained insight of the disabled people’s inner world. In her growth, she was much taller than the contemporaries and the fear of disability drove her to express her feelings through writing. For another, her writing of the disabled man was influenced by the former writers. Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio had a vital impact on McCullers and her writings. In addition, Russian writer Dostoevsky’s distorted describing of morbid psychology and British writer Lawrence’s presentation of love, all have different influence on her. At last, McCullers’ writing of the disabled figures is based on her own experience; and being disabled as a result of serious sickness pushes her to seek self-salvation by writing.The types of disabled characteristics under McCullers’ pen can be interpreted through these four aspects:the first type is the psychologically sick teenagers who are frightened of disability and this kind of psychology and mood is the reflection of what McCullers experienced during her growth as a young girl. The second type are those inborn disabled persons and those who become disabled due to autolesion. McCullers holds deep understanding of and sympathy for them and gives special attention to the plight of women’s existence. The third are psychologically disabled man who have distorted and morbid mentality and make evil deeds that lead to others’ as well as his own tragedy. The forth being the abnormal affections include the twisted affection between the couple, love triangle, and morbid homosexuality. These affections reflect, to various degrees, McCullers’ figures’ both psychological and mental flaws, as well as her own experience of love.Some of the figures also research the path of escaping from the plight and self-salvation, which can be separated into two phases. The first phase that fighting against the plight by self-deceiving actions of creating the illusion of "God". However, after the smash of the illusion, the heroes of her work confront with another desperate dilemma-the second phase. Faced with this dilemma, as the man of "making their own minds", they find the way out through free choice. Some choose the passive way of "suicide"; still some who stick to their faith in desperation and bravely assume their own choice and responsibility. Although every figure is free to make choices but they have to bear the consequences following whatever choice they made. McCullers implies in her work the following ideas:when faced with dilemma, one should be positive in making choice and assuming the consequences, meanwhile he should believe that the future is full of hope.