SOURCE: Bradshaw, Charles. “Language and Responsibility: The Failure of Discourse in Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” Southern Quarterly 37, no. 2 (winter 1999): 118-26.

[In the following essay, Bradshaw analyzes John Singer's relationship with the other main characters in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, focusing on how Singer's status as a deaf-mute affects their concept of Self.]

I distrust the compromised word “love,” but the responsibility for the Other, being-for-the-other, seemed to me … to stop the anonymous and senseless rumbling of being.

—Emmanuel Levinas

Primary to Emmanuel Levinas's ethical philosophy is his assertion that there exists an “Other” prior to and absolutely different than the being of the “Self.” Indeed, the Self depends upon the Other as a referent for its existence, making this Self-Other dichotomy the fundamental relationship in determining identity. Yet, in its attempts to internalize and make meaning of this relationship, the Self naturally reduces, or totalizes the Other into digestible concepts—concepts which can be used by the Self to construct a distorted identity from a complex existence. Even the very act of gazing upon or touching another can result in this totalization (Totality 194). But within the physical manifestation of the Other, Levinas posits the existence of a “Face” which refuses to be totalized or contained by the Self even though the Self inevitably attempts to do this. Levinas's concept of “Face” is the basis for the Other's resistance to the Self's totalizing tendencies:

access to the face is straightaway ethical. You turn yourself toward the Other as toward an object when you see a nose, eyes, a forehead, a chin, and you can describe them. The best way of encountering the Other is not even to notice the color of his eyes! When one observes the color of the eyes one is not in social relationship with the Other. The relation with the face can surely be dominated by perception, but what is specifically the face is what cannot be reduced to that.

(Ethics 87-88, emphasis added)

For Levinas the Face is not a material representation of the Other's presence; instead, it represents integral difference between the Self and the Other which cannot be conceptualized. Rather than identify this difference as physical, Levinas suggests this relationship depends upon a recognition of the Face—a deeper, more essential manifestation of the Other's difference from the Self. However, because the Self cannot conceive of this difference, it strives to reduce the Other into comprehensible bits of meaning which only make the Other an extension of the Self.

While the Self's urge to envelop the Face of the Other is unavoidable, Levinas claims that it is this very Face which demands discourse as a means to escape the reductive tendencies of the Self.

In discourse I have always distinguished in fact, between the saying and the said. … the saying is the fact that before the face I do not simply remain there contemplating it, I respond to it. The saying is a way of greeting the Other, but to greet the Other is already to answer for him. It is difficult to be silent in someone's presence; this difficulty has its ultimate foundation in this signification proper to the saying, whatever is the said. It is necessary to speak of something, of the rain and fine weather, no matter what, but to speak, to respond to him and already to answer for him.

(Ethics 88)

Because words by nature are imperfect in their ability to convey absolute meaning and must be amended continually by more words, Levinas believes that it is the responsibility of the Self to engage the Other in a “saying,” or responsible conversation, allowing dialogue to reproduce and resisting the Self's impulse to totalize, or make a “said” of the Other. In other words, as the Self uses discourse to create a relationship with the Other, meaning is constantly deferred, forcing the Self to constantly reevaluate its perceptions of the Other.¹ Thus, responsibly engaging the Other in conversation refuses to allow the Self to totalize, maintaining essential difference in the vital relationship between the Self and the Other. However, this association becomes problematic in Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, as Mick Kelly, Doctor Benedict Copeland, and Jake Blount each construct a Self-Other relationship with someone incapable of language—the deaf-mute, John Singer.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is a story of individual alienation and the frustration of unfulfilled desires in an economically depressed southern town. Each of the main characters struggle with their failure to create meaning for their existence as their voracious attempts at self-identity are either ignored or misunderstood. This problem is compounded by an inability to communicate their innermost feelings through language until they find it impossible to maintain meaningful discourse with any other people. As a result, their language becomes increasingly self-centered, furthering isolation from others while reinforcing false identities. Yet, each character must confront opposition to this egocentricity in the very existence of others and, more specifically, through the language of others. As Mick seeks love and understanding, and Doctor Copeland and Jake Blount pursue social reform, each searches for an absolute solution to their individual alienation. But these purposes are defeated by the language of others which refuses to allow them a totalizing vision of the world. Whether it is familial contention, illiteracy, or ridicule, others's language undermines these characters' sense of self by refusing complete acceptance of their desires. When these desires are unfulfilled, instead of responsibly engaging the Other in conversation, each turns inward, resigned to an estranged life. As these characters meet John Singer, however, they turn to him, believing that he understands their plight. Their assumptions seem to be confirmed when he offers no resistance to their language and even appears to completely identify with their problems. But the ironically named Singer is deaf and cannot speak. He can offer no verbal resistance to their consuming discourse, allowing them to totalize him. Because of this, Mick Kelly, Doctor Copeland, and Jake Blount center their lives on the deaf-mute, increasing their skewed self-perceptions and ultimately their isolation.

Mick Kelly is a thirteen-year-old girl, struggling to find both solitude and acceptance in an overcrowded, oppressive house. Along with having to come to terms with her developing sexuality, Mick must also grapple with a creative urge which is stifled by her family's poverty and disinterest. Early in the story Mick, away from the confines of her home and family, climbs to the roof of an unfinished house and glories in her freedom:

Mick stood up and held herself very straight. She spread out her arms like wings. This was the place where everybody wanted to stand. The very top. … She wanted to sing. All the songs she knew pushed up toward her throat, but there was no sound.

(41)

At the very height of her enthusiasm, Mick feels creativity swell within her and needs to express it. Yet, she cannot translate this experience into words; she has no means to convey her deepest creative impulses. The best she can do is write pornographic graffiti and her initials on the walls of the unfinished house, but even this leaves her unsatisfied (45). Upon returning home her sisters ridicule her, and her preoccupied brother, Bill, resists her expressive attempts with impatient, curt words. Mick is left with no familial support and no one to engage in conversation as a means for verbalizing her creativity. Her attempts at language fail, and she must find other ways to express herself.

But these efforts to contain and express creativity become increasingly frustrating as Mick must rely more and more on her own body as a medium for communication. After her party fails for the students of Vocational High, Mick rests outside the open window of a house playing the radio. After several uninteresting songs, she hears Beethoven's third symphony and enjoys its stimulation. The symphony touches her so deeply that she enthusiastically decides: “This [music] was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. … This music was her—the real plain her” (142). But her enthusiasm turns quickly to frustration as she realizes that “[w]onderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen” (143). Mick, although identifying with the beauty of the music, cannot completely understand the effect it has on her. Her attempts to make sense of the feelings which the music produces are insufficient and only leave her with a “bad hurt” and a “blankness” when she tries to make sense of the notes (143). Mick cannot express this creative joy in words; instead, she uses her body:

Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh with her fists. She pounded the same muscle with all her strength until the tears came down her face. But she could not feel this hard enough. … She grabbed a handful of [rocks] and began scraping them up and down on the same spot until her hand was bloody. Then she fell back to the ground and lay looking up at the night. With the fiery hurt in her leg she felt better.

(143)

Although this masochistic experience relieves her emotional pain, it only further removes Mick from verbally expressing her creativity. With no others to talk to, she can only relate her experiences to herself, and in this extreme case all that results is a masking physical sensation.²

Mick's self-centered aesthetic experiences continue in this way until she develops a relationship with John Singer. Because Singer is a boarder in her house, Mick has the opportunity to associate with him frequently. She listens to the radio in his room and secretly follows him around. She makes him part of her “inside room” where only her music exists and never leaves the house while he is there. But this infatuation only leads Mick further away from developing a responsible relationship with an Other. Although she “talked to him more than she had ever talked to a person before” (291), her relationship with Singer is not reciprocal. It is merely Mick totalizing the speechless Singer to such an extent that she fools herself into believing he identifies with her creative needs. In a sadly ironic daydream, she pictures Singer attending a concert which she conducts, admiring her skill (289). But Mick neglects to acknowledge that Singer would not be able to hear the concert, let alone identify the quality of sound her conducting might produce. Instead, she imagines that he would count her as his “very best friend” (289). Because Singer cannot understand everything Mick says and can only respond to her with looks and not language, she is able to assign any characteristic to him she wishes. Although Levinas argues that the very Face of the Other refuses totalization, Mick does not allow Singer's Face to impress itself upon her. She is consumed by her creative desires and has been unable to express herself for so long that her discourse is always Self-affirming, rather than turned toward the Other, John Singer. As a result, she deifies Singer: “When she thought of what she used to imagine was God she could only see Mister Singer with a long, white sheet around him. God was silent—maybe that was why she was reminded” (144). Because Mick will not acknowledge Singer for his own sake, she totalizes him, ignoring his right to exist as an Other and not part of her enveloping Self.

While Mick's expression of her suppressed creativity ultimately fails in her reductive view of Singer, Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland's communication of the “strong, true purpose” (162) only results in his alienating himself from those he would influence.

Doctor Copeland's “strong, true purpose” is the liberation of the town's oppressed African American citizens. Traveling from house to house on medical visits, Doctor Copeland speaks “the mission and the truth” to others, hoping to rouse the people from their poverty and oppression (172). But his words of revolution are misunderstood by and inaccessible to those he seeks to inspire. For Doctor Copeland's obscure, philosophical discourse is continually undermined by the misunderstanding of his family and friends and their colloquial replies.

As he talks with his children, Willie and Portia, and her husband, Highboy, Doctor Copeland tries to engage in friendly conversation to strengthen relationships with his family. But as Portia and Highboy casually talk about everyday experiences, he cannot resist lecturing Willie about his easy-going attitude. “William,” he says, “I wonder how much of all the things I have said to you when you were a child have stayed in your mind.” Willie fearfully stammers: “I don't know what you m-m-means.” Without thinking, he launches into a lecture about how his children have failed to live up to his expectations. He tells Willie:

to you and [your brothers] Hamilton and Karl Marx I gave all that was in me. And I put all of my trust and hope in you. And all I get is blank misunderstanding and idleness and indifference. Of all I have put in nothing has remained. All has been taken away from me.

(107)

Before he can continue, Portia interrupts with “Hush. … Father, you promised me that us would not quarrel. This here is crazy. Us can't afford to quarrel” (107). In this exchange of words McCullers contrasts Doctor Copeland's academic rhetoric with the vernacular of his children, not to pass educational judgment, but to show how the doctor's language alienates him from those to whom he should be closest. Willie, Highboy, and Portia cannot make sense of his ideas; instead they only understand that he despises them for their seeming simplicity. Even the philosophical and literary names of his children attest to the unfulfilled aspirations he has for them.

The disparity between Doctor Copeland's elevated discourse and his family's ability to comprehend grows wider as he becomes increasingly frustrated. At the Christmas party he sponsors each year, he cannot resist promoting his ideas of racial equality. After delivering an eloquent, academic speech on bettering the social position of his people, Doctor Copeland receives congratulations and applause. In his glory, he decides: “To teach and exhort and explain to his people—and to have them understand. That was the best of all. To speak the truth and be attended” (233-34). But this satisfaction soon subsides with the leaving of the guests. He wonders, “How much that he had said today was understood? How much would be of any value?” (236). For it seems to him that “the words he had used … seemed to fade and lose their strength. The words left unsaid were heavier on his heart. They rolled up to his lips and fretted them” (236). He suspects the failure of his language to accurately portray his “strong, true purpose.” Indeed, during the most poignant parts of his speech, people yell out “Mighty Lord! Lead us from this wilderness of death!” and “Hallelujah! Save us, Lord!” (232), ironically undermining his philosophical rhetoric with their supportive religious vernacular. Even at his most persuasive, words betray him, further distancing his efforts from those whom he would help.

Isolation leads Doctor Copeland to the room of John Singer. Although Singer is not of his race, Doctor Copeland thinks of him as being understanding of the town's racial differences. “[Singer] was not like other white men. He was a wise man, and he understood the strong, true purpose in a way that other white men could not” (162). But Singer is not an activist for social reform, he only follows Doctor Copeland on his rounds, giving nickels to the children and maintaining a quiet “decorum” (162). Because of Singer's passive personality, and his inability to speak, Doctor Copeland is able to prescribe the traits he wishes Singer to have. Singer cannot undermine the doctor's intellectual language with “hallelujahs” and common slang; instead his silence allows Doctor Copeland to fill in any attributes where Singer might be lacking, causing the doctor to totalize him. This totalization even allows him to identify Singer as belonging to an oppressed race as well. He believes that in Singer's “face there was something gentle and Jewish, the knowledge of one who belongs to a race that is oppressed” (162). Doctor Copeland, in spite of his academic training and philosophical knowledge, is unable to see the totalizing influence of his “strong, true purpose.” In Singer's face he recognizes a wisdom and existence beyond the physical features—Levinas's concept of the Face—but his totalizing vision reduces Singer to someone with whom he can identify rather than an Other he can responsibly engage in conversation. In his need to communicate, Doctor Copeland only succeeds in increasing his alienation and disassociating himself from those closest to him. His relationship with Singer becomes only an extension of his consuming desire which leaves him in a Self-centered, reductive relationship. Ironically, in his efforts to serve others, Doctor Copeland serves only himself.

Jake Blount similarly desires social reform. His mission to unite the underprivileged of the world leads him to the South where he hopes to free the workers in the cotton mills. Like Doctor Copeland, Jake feels a deep responsibility to communicate his message to others. Yet, words only get in his way as his desire to unite workers is thwarted by their failure to listen to or comprehend his babbling.

When Singer first meets him, Jake is drunk and raving. He has been in Biff Brannon's New York Cafe for twelve days, living off the owner's generosity. He wears the same filthy linen suit everyday and is in a perpetual state of disorientation. To match his disheveled appearance, his language has no cohesiveness or connection to logic. He rambles from table to table bothering the customers and “talking some queer kind of politics” (20). Biff notices that “most of the time nobody was sure just what [Jake] was saying. Talk—talk—talk. The words came out of his throat like a cataract” (20). Jake, who we later learn has always had a longing to preach to people, fails in his attempts to communicate his purpose. Not only is he drunk and offensive, his language makes little or no sense. “Sometimes he talked like a linthead and sometimes like a professor. He would use words a foot long and then slip up on his grammar. … He was always changing” (20). Any attempts Jake makes at communication are frustrated by his inability to form his thoughts into recognizable language. He even makes enemies of the very workers he tries to liberate. When they hear him talk, instead of making sense of his attempts at social reform, they label him a “Red Bolshevik” that “oughta be in jail” (340). Jake's “cataract” of language only results in ridicule and frustration as he fights harder and harder for understanding but ends up alienating himself from others.

His association with Singer has the potential to break through alienation, but, like Mick and Doctor Copeland, Jake uses Singer only as a means for expressing his own egocentric desires. Like the others, Jake frequents Singer's apartment to discuss his ideas. Although Singer often plays chess or just silently watches, Jake believes that Singer understands his political agenda and so continues talking. He considers Singer one of his elite ones who knows the true nature of the world's evil. However, Jake's self-centered discourse falls upon the deaf ears of Singer who, at times, does not even realize Jake is in the room with him. Nonetheless, Jake persists in spewing out disjointed bits of political jargon, and Singer's silence only encourages him to continue. Because the relationship is based on Jake's talking and Singer's “listening,” Jake is allowed to develop a skewed sense of his existence. His frustration with his failure to express himself through language is covered up by the seeming success he has in compelling Singer to listen to him. But this success is based upon his own reifying perception of Singer and the empowerment of his Self over Singer as the Other.

An interesting situation occurs at the center of the novel which shows the many roles other characters have forced Singer to fulfill. Mick, Doctor Copeland, Jake, and the cafe owner, Biff Brannon, all happen to meet in Singer's room at the same time. Singer, the perfect host, tries to make everybody comfortable, smiling and bringing refreshments to his guests. Yet the four people, who have spent countless hours talking to John Singer in previous months, have nothing to say to him, let alone each other:

Doctor Copeland would not sit down. He stood in the doorway, hat in hand, and only bowed coldly to the others. They looked at him as though they wondered why he was there. Jake Blount opened the beers he had brought with him and the foam spilled down on his shirtfront. Mick Kelly listened to the music from the radio. Biff Brannon sat on the bed, his knees crossed, his eyes scanning the group before him and then becoming narrow and fixed.

(252)

The scene inside Singer's room is one of awkwardness and alienation. Each individual maintains her or his own distinct separateness, creating a room of loners. Attempts at friendly conversation find no common ground: “Each person addressed his words mainly to the mute. Their thoughts seemed to converge in him as the spokes of a wheel lead to the center hub” (253).

In this encounter McCullers exposes the theme of totalization which is central to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Each individual, in private visits with Singer, has totalized him to such an extent that it is only possible for them to identify him as an extension of their individual Self. Yet, because Singer has fulfilled multiple roles as an extension of each character, he cannot do this in the presence of others. For to do so would deny the role he plays for each of them. Rather than force Singer into this awkward situation, they choose to speak sparingly of the weather and other uninteresting things. After a few awkward moments all four leave rather than confront the consequences of conversation with Singer in the presence of others. In the very act of hesitating to engage in discourse with Singer, the characters reveal the Self-oriented relationship they have maintained with the Other and that their conversations with Singer have only covered up the true isolation they feel.

Interestingly, even John Singer, the man who is totalized by the other characters in the novel falls into a similar trap in his relationship with his friend, the simple-minded Spiros Antonapoulos. Although Singer has no social agenda and does not struggle with oppressed artistic tendencies, his love and concern for his friend results in a totalizing relationship where Antonapoulos becomes a part of Singer's Self.³ Antonapoulos is deaf as well, and whether because of a common handicap or latent homosexuality, as some suggest,⁴ Singer takes care of his friend for several years. Each day, after walking Antonapoulos home from work, Singer engages him in conversation through sign-language: “His hands shaped the words in a swift series of designs. His face was eager and his gray-green eyes sparkled brightly. With his thin, strong hands he told Antonapoulos all that had happened during the day” (4-5). But like the other characters, Singer chooses to communicate with someone who is incapable of responding. When Singer communicates with his hands, “Antonapoulos [sits] back lazily and [looks] at Singer. It was seldom that he ever moved his hands to speak at all—and then it was to say that he wanted to eat or to sleep or to drink” (5). Whether he is unable to formulate sign language, or merely unwilling to respond, Antonapoulos does not communicate. Rather, he centers his life around food and alcohol: “For, excepting drinking and a certain solitary secret pleasure, Antonapoulos loved to eat more than anything else in the world” (4). Because Antonapoulos has no desire for communication above asking for food, Singer is left with no one to complete a reciprocal relationship. Antonapoulos becomes instead a disinterested repository for Singer's love.

With no response to his attempts to communicate, Singer must express his love for Antonapoulos in other ways. When Antonapoulos lies sick in a mental institution, Singer brings him presents and shows a Mickey Mouse comedy to help cheer him up. But when the movie ends Antonapoulos returns to his taciturn state, lazily regarding Singer. Singer begins rapidly signing so fast that his signs become blurred and he often has to repeat them. He continues signing until visiting hours end. Only when he heads for the door do his hands stop (267). Singer's activity, however, leaves no room for Antonapoulos, even if he had chosen to communicate, to express himself. In his urgency to show love for his friend, Singer expends all his energy in signing. Antonapoulos, unresponsive, becomes totalized as an object of Singer's devotion. As an extension of Singer himself, love is defeated in the very act of existing. Through his obsession, Singer erases the object of his love and can only continue with his frenetic signing until Antonapoulos dies, leaving him no Other to consume in the discourse of the Self. With the basis for his existence gone, Singer walks up to his room and calmly puts a bullet through his chest (391).

This suicide becomes particularly damaging in light of Singer's dream in which he sees

Antonapoulos [kneeling] at the top of these steps. He was naked and he fumbled with something that he held above his head and gazed at it as though in prayer. [Singer] himself knelt halfway down the steps. He was naked and cold and he could not take his eyes from Antonapoulos and the thing he held above him. Behind him on the ground he felt [Jake Blount, Mick Kelly, Dr. Copeland, and Biff Brannon]. They knelt naked and he felt their eyes on him.

(260)

The hierarchical relationship in which the characters have placed themselves is illustrated in Singer's dream. Singer's love positions him below Antonapoulos and above the others who make of Singer a sort of savior from their isolation. Yet Antonapoulos is concerned only with sensual pleasures and material objects. As a result, the levels of association become an inverted pyramid, balanced only by Antonapoulos's tenuous existence. With Singer's suicide, the rest are left with no referent for their identity. The false Other they constructed Singer to be is destroyed, leaving them helpless and searching for meaning.

Mick, having taken a creativity-sapping job at Woolworth's has no one left to communicate with. Finding Singer dead, she resorts immediately to physical sensations of pain: “She had run from the house. The shock wouldn't let her be still. She had run into the dark and hit herself with her fists” (421). Doctor Copeland, diseased and dying, resigns himself to existence on a farm with his family, too far away from his work to influence any racial reform. Jake Blount reverts to drunken raging, inciting the workers of the town to riot, and resorting to fighting as a means to express what his words will not command. Only Biff Brannon seems to emerge from Singer's suicide with any sense of self worth.

While the three characters rely on Singer only to reinforce their distorted vision of themselves, Biff Brannon regards him as someone worth studying because of the influence he has on others. He does talk to Singer in his room like the others, but McCullers gives us little hint of Biff's conversation. He may speak to Singer about his sexual inadequacy and the distant relationship he has with his wife, or his desire for Mick Kelly, but the specifics are not important. Biff has problems like the others, but he does not use conversation with Singer as means to promote a false sense of Self. He has other ways to establish his identity.

The individuals who frequent the New York Cafe say little to each other and exist as isolated entities, but they provide Biff a myriad of examples for study. Biff is content to lean on the bar and observe the comings and goings of his customers. He has an infatuation with the “freaks” who come into his cafe, and at the sight of any deformity or emotional instability responds with discounts on food and free beer. In fact, he is “freakish” himself, struggling for sexual identity, applying his wife's Agua Florida, and washing his hair with lemon rinse (425). But by identifying with the extraordinary Biff is allowed to escape the totalizing tendencies of the Self. Instead of hiding his differences behind manipulative language and making Singer an extension of his Self as the other characters do, Biff maintains a separateness from John Singer by observing him and others and engaging them in meaningful discourse. He is content to watch Singer and the totalizing influences others exert on the mute. He even realizes that “Blount and Mick made of [Singer] a sort of home-made God. Owing to the fact that he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have” (278). Realizing this, Biff does not take advantage of Singer's inability to provide verbal defense to the consuming discourse of the other characters.

When Singer dies, Biff's identity is not undermined. Instead, he is able to glean wisdom by observing the effect Singer has had upon Mick, Jake, and Doctor Copeland. In a final moment of realization, Biff catches a vision of

human struggle and valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who—one word—love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror. Between the two worlds he was suspended. He saw that he was looking at his own face in the counter glass before him. Sweat glistened on his temples and his face was contorted. One eye was opened wider than the other. The left eye delved narrowly into the past while the right gazed wide and affrighted into a future of blackness, error, and ruin. And he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith. Sharply he turned away.

(430)

Contemplating Singer's death, Biff understands the necessity for human struggle and pain and the need for love. But in the very moment his soul expands with this realization he is struck by a feeling of terror. For he sees himself as an Other, his Face reflected in the counter glass, resisting his own totalizing tendencies. He sees himself in an isolated world, uncertain of the future but at the same time sure that mistakes of the past make isolation unavoidable for all individuals at some time. In his fear Biff experiences what McCullers asks of her characters. By acknowledging the uncertainty of existence, she suggests that all anyone can do is endure and press forward, always aware of that fact. With this realization, it becomes ethically impossible for one to totalize another.⁵

Notes

1. Levinas writes extensively of the role language plays in maintaining the necessary difference (alterity) of the Other from the Self. See particularly, Totality and Infinity 195, 204-12, and Ethics and Infinity 88, 97-98.

2. For a discussion of involuntary physical manifestations of frustration see Frances Freeman Paden's “Autistic Gestures in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” Modern Fiction Studies 28.3 (1982) 453-63.

3. Ihab H. Hassan presents a particularly clear analysis of the self-defeating aspects of love in Carson McCullers's fiction. See “Carson McCullers: The Alchemy of Love and Aesthetics of Pain,” Modern Fiction Studies 5.4 (1959) 311-26.

4. See David Madden's article, “The Paradox of the Need for Privacy and the Need for Understanding in Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” Literature and Psychology 17 (1967) 128-40.

5. This approach to Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter differs from earlier critical evaluations by contributing a philosophical framework which requires ethical discourse as a means for escaping individual isolation. Although other critics have effectively evaluated isolating influences in McCullers's work, Levinas's ethical philosophy provides a way to reinterpret the causes for this isolation.

Works Cited

Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1985.

———. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969.

McCullers, Carson. 1940. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. New York: Random, 1993.