Racism, Inequality, and Injustice Theme Analysis

Set in the Deep South in the late 1930s, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter wrestles with the major social, political, and economic divisions that defined not only the region, but the world more largely during those years. Early reviews of the book, such as one in the August 1940 issue of The New Republic, lauded McCullers for her ability to “embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness”—and indeed, that blend of “apprehension and tenderness” is what defines McCullers’s outlook on the many injustices that define the community at the center of the novel. As McCullers depicts the forces of racism, inequality, and injustice at play in the unnamed mill town at the center of the novel, she uses that town as an analogue for the ways in which these issues reverberate through society more largely, ultimately arguing that until human society acknowledges and attempts to amend the plight of its most vulnerable, downtrodden members, it is—and always will be—a failure.

Racism and its resultant cruelties and injustices is perhaps the most complex and devastating issue in American society. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter reflects that complexity—and though McCullers’s book sometimes uses the language of racism, it does so in pursuit of exposing exactly how racist thought and speech keep society’s most vulnerable members down and prevent them from healing, advancing, or receiving the justice they deserve. Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland, the black doctor who is one of the novel’s main characters, is the character whose arc most directly intersects with the theme of racism, inequality, and injustice. A weary, hopeful, complicated man who sees and takes to heart the injustices, disadvantages, and cruelties inflicted upon his people, Doctor Copeland longs to inspire the black community in his town to stand together against the white people, institutions, and ideologies which oppress them. Doctor Copeland’s politics, however, don’t just revolve around revolution and aggression. Copeland believes in Marxism, and longs to impress upon his people the need to “den[y] [them]selves comfort that the needs of others may be lessened.”  Doctor Copeland believes in a society structured upon the words of Karl Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Copeland’s politics embody his anxieties, frustrations, and anger about not just racial inequality, but socioeconomic inequality. For Copeland, all these many refractions of cruelty and injustice are bound up in one another. Economic injustice is used to reinforce (and justify) racial injustice—while the wealthy few at the top of society thrive, the oppressed groups at the bottom are unable to do anything to change their fates. Doctor Copeland’s speeches to his guests at Christmastime and his entreaties to his patients, acquaintances, and children embody McCullers’s larger thematic message: that until society cares for its most vulnerable, it will be a failure.

Doctor Copeland’s story also involves systemic injustice and police brutality. When his son Willie is jailed for assault and sent to work on a chain gang, Willie angers a guard during a work assignment. As a result, the guards lock Willie and two other prisoners in a cold shed and string them up by their feet. The guards leave the men in the shed for days, and by the time they let Willie and the others out, Willie’s feet have become gangrenous and must be amputated. After Willie is released from prison and returns home, he complains of phantom pains in his feet and expresses longing simply to know where his feet are, and what was done with them after they were cut from his body. Willie’s horrifying ordeal further agitates and angers Doctor Copeland. The doctor dreams of organizing the black community through ideology, nonviolence, and passion—but when he sees the cruelty of police brutality in action, he understands that society is simply stacked against him, his family, his community, and his entire race. McCullers illustrates the failure of society to care for its most marginalized individuals, and even shows how it actively brutalizes and terrorizes them. Willie’s missing feet are a metaphor for the profound losses and cruel thefts perpetrated against black people in America every day—and for the inability of society’s most disadvantaged members to ever reclaim the things stolen from them, even as their memories of those things haunt them daily.

While many sentences and passages within The Heart is a Lonely Hunter contain language or sentiment that is racially insensitive by contemporary standards, Carson McCullers’s novel nonetheless holds a deeper message of longing for racial, social, and economic equality—and for the radical, revolutionary politics that McCullers believes would allow equality to take root in America. McCullers’s first novel is suffused with an open desire for a more just society—one in which racism and capitalism are dissolved and replaced by social and economic justice for all.