Communication Failures Texualised In McCullers’ The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

In 1940,the twenty-three-year-old Carson Mc Cullers published her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.The story happens in a small town in the south of America,four disparate people are drawn by a deaf-mute,Singer.Through communication with Singer,their lives undergo unexpected changes.This thesis attempts to analyze the ineffectiveness and failure of communication among the characters in the novel from the perspectives of Jurgen Habermas’ communicative action theory and James Phelan’s rhetorical narratology.After an analysis of the characters’ communicating mechanism,it shows that this mechanism has a three-layered hierarchical structure and operates via sign language and verbal languages.Their communication proves to be finally ineffective according to Habermas’ standard.Besides,through the exploration of two unique characters from the perspective of narratology,the communication of the characters is inferred to be a destined failure.It is figured out that the communication among the characters is self-satisfying and illusionary at the same time,and that this communication is actually their revolt against loneliness and spiritual isolation.Carson Mc Cullers’ perception of spiritual isolation is indeed embedded in this novel,and loneliness is also an unneglectable theme of this book.Although loneliness is unsolvable and the communication of the characters fails,people’s revolt against spiritual isolation and yearning for communication will never stop.