The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers

Green is that hill and lonely, set far in a shadowy place;
White is the hunter’s quarry, a lost-loved human face:
O hunting heart, shall you find it, with arrow of failing breath,
Led o’er a green hill lonely by the shadowy hound of Death?

– from “The Lonely Hunter”, Fiona MacLeod (aka William Sharp)

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, the 1940 novel by American author Carson McCullers, is about the deaf man named Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the US state of Georgia. McCullers’ characters reach out to one another for sympathy and understanding, but not all of them can complete the connection, and their isolated thoughts form a choir of profoundly moving literature. Love is presented throughput as the only antidote to isolation.

Mick Kelly, a young girl, Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator, Biff Brannon, a restaurateur, and Dr. Benedict Copeland, an idealistic African-American doctor consider Singer their closest confidante but none of them is unselfish enough to love another with complete sincerity. The one character Singer truly and selflessly loves, responds to his affection instinctively as a pet or a baby would do. The attention Singer gives to the other four characters is partly love, but it is not complete because he does not fully understand the characters needs. They in turn remain egoists who never understand Singer, don’t even understand the motive behind his suicide. He baffles the other characters more in death than he has done in life.

You can read The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter in Google Books.