When I finished reading “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” I began to realize an underlying theme in the novel. This theme is coping with frustration. It was obvious throughout the entire book that many of the characters live sad and unfulfilled lives but it took me awhile to tie it all together. The most prominent and tragic example of a character coping with frustration is John Singer. The death of his friend and inability to really express himself to others come to a climax in the novel at the end of part 2. “Then when he had washed the ashtray and the glass he brought out a pistol from his pocket and put a bullet in his chest” (McCullers, 326).
The second and less drastic example is Jake Blount. He is beyond obsessed with American society. He can’t stand the fact that a small few elite citizens control almost all of the wealth and impose low wages and harsh conditions on the workers while the elite continue to grow richer. Blount deals with his frustrations by binge drinking and ranting about his concerns to anyone who will tolerate his irate behavior. His final coping mechanism is to leave the town entirely, “Jake walked steadily. As soon as the town was behind a new surge of energy came to him” (McCullers, 350).
Both of these main characters had different ways of dealing with their frustration. One chose death and the other chose a new start in a different place. I wasn’t surprised with what Singer did because him being a mute is what caused a lot of his frustration. However, Blount seems to have moved from town to town before. I wonder how many he would go to before his lifestyle catches up to him.
Will, great post. I think you're exactly right here in that all of these characters are coping with some sort of frustration, to varying degrees of effectiveness. How do you think these things are revealed?
ReplyDelete