The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Blount is a devoted socialist who longs to travel the South and expose the evils of capitalism to the workers he meets. Meanwhile, Jake Blount eventually secures a job at an outdoor attraction, the Sunny Dixie Show, working as a carousel operator. Mick is fascinated with John Singer, and often visits him in his room upstairs. A middle child in a family of six children, Mick harbors dreams of being a famous composer and pianist and is constantly writing music in her head. Mick Kelly, a 13-year-old tomboy whose parents run the town boarding house, feels lonely and bored all the time. Brannon is perturbed by Blount’s radical political views and violence when intoxicated, but together he and Singer conspire to feed, clothe, and shelter the clearly ailing stranger. Brannon has a soft spot for strangers, “freaks,” and misfits, and draws Alice’s ire when he lets a belligerent, drunken wanderer, Jake Blount, stay and drink at the café on credit for 12 days. Biff Brannon, the proprietor of the café, is trapped in an unsatisfying marriage to a woman named Alice. He moves into a boarding house run by the Kelly family and begins frequenting the all-night establishment the New York Café. Singer mourns being left alone in a town where no one truly understands him. John Singer, a deaf and mute man, has recently been separated from his companion of 10 years, Spiros Antonapoulos-who is also deaf and mute-after the irritable, quarrelsome Antonapoulos is placed in an insane asylum by his cousin Charlie Parker. In Part One of the novel, Carson McCullers introduces five characters-all of whom live in an unnamed mill town in the Deep South, and each of whom is profoundly lonely in his or her own way.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers