Wunderkind | Essays and Criticism

  • An Overview of Wunderkind

    In the essay below, he offers a thoughtful exploration of how the writer’s experience melds with the crafting of fiction, specifically in ‘‘Wunderkind.’’

  • Carson McCullers’s Precocious Wunderkind

    In the following excerpt, Petry examines the sexual overtones in McCullers’s ‘‘Wunderkind,’’ and concludes that the underlying sexual crisis in the story stems from the protagonist’s sexual feelings for her music teacher.

  • Carson McCullers and the Female Wunderkind

    In the following excerpt, Perry offers an interpretation of McCullers’s ‘‘Wunderkind,’’ asserting that ‘‘the essential conflict . . . is how to react to the pressures and distortions of adult sexuality.’’

  • Carson McCullers’s Life

    In the following excerpt, Cook gives a short overview of McCullers’s ‘‘Wunderkind,’’ and discusses the author’s ‘‘gift for recapturing the intense but diffuse feelings of children at critical moments in their growing up.’’