The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

I just finished the book The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. It took me about three weeks to complete this book, which is abnormal for me because if I read at all it is in small bursts filled with many books. I actually took my time reading this one, comparably.

Anyhow, that's besides the point. This was a great novel, it had so many themes that it is hard to know which she found most important to include in the story. The story was of five individuals of different age groups, genders, incomes, races, and ideologies. I guess what I liked most about it was how diverse the people were, but also how similar their desires and feelings were. Most of the book was revolving around how hard life was for these characters, but what was interesting was that they were not only similar to eachother, but also similar to the people that you know today.

It seems that the loneliness that the characters felt was so perfectly portrayed that it is hard to think of any person that hasn't experienced it themselves. I don't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read the book, so I will end on this note. I guess that this seems like a fairly obvious observation about the human condition, but it seems to me that no matter how diverse life can be, people are always looking for one thing, someone to love and be loved. I think the thing that is most beautiful about this book is it's ability to show what life is like if you don't realize how much you want to love, or how little you can know about being loved. You feel the loneliness that these characters feel, and yet all they need to realize is the love that is around them that can dissolve their isolated feelings. I suppose the major theme about this book was obviously loneliness, and what I loved was the constant search these characters were on for something that could never be fully realized. And to know that (I would say most if not all) people have this urge, to be perfectly loved, gives me even greater hope of God's constant draw on the soul of humanity.