The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

McCullers (1917-1967) is an icon of American literature, best known for her writing in the Southern Gothic tradition. Southern Gothic novels evoke derelict settings and eccentric characters. The culture of the deep South is conservative yet superstitious, tight-knit, mistrustful, but also loyal and often beautiful. The rural nature of the Southern Gothic novel incorporates setting as directly related to character development, especially character psychology. McCullers’s contributions to the rise of this subgenre solidify her role as the voice of a uniquely American experience. McCullers’s work often focuses thematic exploration on physical disability and loneliness, a reflection of her own experiences. Throughout her life, McCullers struggled with finding love and with an illness that often caused her to use a wheelchair. McCullers’s novels are not autobiographical, rather, they focus on American modernization and the isolation that comes with it. She is also noted as a white Southern writer who wrote complex Black characters at a time when most white writers, especially in the South, portrayed Black characters from a paternalistic or stereotypical point of view.