Man's search for spiritual fulfillment in lifelong escape from emotional isolation has been a common theme in literature of all ages cultures. In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, an American feminist writer, this spiritual quest is reflected in the lives of four isolated and lonely people in the Deep South of the 1940s through their search for self-expression and spiritual integration with something greater . of themselves. With confusion toward God and animosity toward country, it's no wonder McCullers creates a fictional world of characters longing for a "spiritual" home. McCullers' profound understanding of the true loneliness and transience of life offers readers a broader perspective on humanity, showing a paradoxical truth that the heart of man is trapped in a perpetual search for a goal greater than themselves, and that man satisfies this spiritual desire by seeking consolation from non-existent illusions constructed by the imagination. This human tendency to assuage loneliness by filling the void of ordinary, everyday life through imagination is represented in the characters Jake Blount and Mick Kelley, all visitors to the deaf-mute John Singer, in whom they find spiritual consolation by sharing their greatest, most intimate feelings . thoughts. Each visitor's imagination leads them to deify John Singer as an omniscient man who has the ability to understand their deepest struggles and quests. However, the power Singer possesses is really just a mirror, a reflection of his visitors, who imagine divine characteristics in him to fill the empty voids in their own beings. The heart's quest to escape loneliness with a lifelong "hunt" for spiritual fulfillment proves completely unattainable due to the eventual disillusionment of John Singer and his visitors, Copeland, Blount and Mick Kelley. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Reflecting the macrocosm of the black civil rights movement in the 20th century, Dr. Copeland, a black man repressed by the racist society of the Deep South, longs deeply for self-expression and is one of the first to deify Singer as a Christ-like figure. Jan Whitt suggests: “McCullers highlights the emptiness of self-confidence in his characterization of the confident Copeland, who shouts to his audience, 'we will save ourselves... with dignity' (3). However, contrary to his ideas, beneath Copeland's facade of conviction and energy, he secretly stifles self-expression and finds his lonely heart wandering aimlessly in the hope of connecting with other people. Copeland's innermost fragility is revealed to readers when his daughter asks, "you have big lights...it doesn't seem natural why you always sit in the dark," and Copeland replies dejectedly, "the dark suits me" (McCullers 61) . Copeland's ideals of bringing racial pride to his people, who are often depicted as fearful or unmotivated throughout the novel, leads Copeland to continued desperation, which leads him to desire identification with members of other oppressed races, such as believing that the deaf mute, Singer, is Jewish and therefore shares similar racial struggles. Copeland's innermost fears cast him in the shadow of a lack of self-expression, and consequently he expressed all his repressed thoughts to Singer, because he felt that the mute would always understand whatever he wanted to say to him. Being a deaf man, Singer most likely does not truly portray Copeland's struggles, but because of his apparent compassion, it comes across to himhowever entrusted with the idealistic deification of the black man. As described by McCullers, “Copeland had his head between his heads… a strange sound came from his throat, like some kind of singing moan. He remembered [Singer's] face when he smiled behind the yellow flame of the match on that rainy night - and peace was in him” (77). Although Singer's depth is perhaps just a fictional illusion, Singer's placid complexion offers Copeland crucial empathy during Copeland's racial battles with Southern society. However, the novel paradoxically exempts readers from any real commitment to racial change as all of Copeland's efforts lead to nothing concrete. Indeed, Copeland's idealism in racial struggles and his spiritual dependence on Singer may not have had a notable impact on Southern society, but Copeland's character itself is fully capable of articulating McCullers' point of view according to where man has an innate tendency to romanticize and deify others in an attempt to assuage their isolating loneliness and console himself in moments of failure. While Copeland defends the civil rights of blacks, Blount represents the battered soul of the lower class. Likewise, however, just as Copeland's political struggles lead him to seek spiritual restoration from Singer, Blount's deep questions about life and God also lead him to seek comfort in Singer's camaraderie. A literary critic comments on Blount's confusion about God, revealing the spiritual distortion of the soul that further deepens Blount's ambiguity in religion, his loss of faith in an existence greater than himself: "[he] thrown into the arms of fundamentalist Christianity – with its wailing soloists, sermons of damnation… the Jesus he encountered required crucifixion, self-annihilation” (Murray 5). In essence, as a wanderer from town to town, Blount seeks spiritual belonging through religion but is ultimately deceived, finding no spiritual identification with the Christ he had so desperately sought. Demoralized by religion, he willingly confides his vision of life to the deaf-mute Singer, with an idealized hope that in somehow, Singer's silent face will allow him to understand his deepest philosophies. Blount's anguished expenditure of words indeed portrays the poverty of his soul and Singer's presence seems to teach him to express his repressed emotions: "[the] his] words came out as if a dam inside him had broken" (McCullers 20). Unable to answer, no ordinary observation escapes Singer's lips and therefore disappoints no one. Blount's deification of Singer as an omniscient figure encourages him to speak his mind entirely, portraying the fact that communication is the only access to love, consciousness, nature, God, and dreaming. McCullers writes in The Mortgaged Heart: “there is a deep need in man to express himself by creating a unifying principle or God” (9). All people seek Christ, the author believes, no matter how they define him, no matter what they create him. Blount chooses a flesh-and-blood hero to take the prophet's place, drawing parallels between Singer and Christ. Just as Jesus healed the sick and dying, Singer's quiet company has a therapeutic effect on his visitors, healing Blount's spiritual emptiness. Blount's failure to find God and greater truth during his nomadic lifestyle leads him instead to deify Singer as the ultimate "God", an idealized figure rendered by his imagination who is simply a reflection of his idealistic traits. Divergent from both Copeland and Blount research, which reflects the major struggles ofclass and race, Mick Kelley's driving desires are more focused on personal fulfillment and are representative of the young, female milieu of the 1940s and their search for spiritual integration. Alleviating loneliness through musical and artistic endeavors, when listening to Beethoven's compositions, Mick feels "as if he could tear down all the walls of the house and then march down the street as big as a giant" (McCullers 214). The music echoes the sound of the man's soul, and similar to the way Blount finds temporary spiritual belonging through occasional self-expression, Mick finds spiritual belonging through the sound of music. However, she must only find pleasure in Beethoven's symphonies, as no one else shows her appreciation for music, causing her to be eternally and isolatingly lonely. Through Mick's search for identification with other human beings, she too idolizes Singer as a "homemade God" to find inner consolation. One critic writes that Singer's altruism “envelops his fellow men, making them long for the comfort of his quiet spirit... the room in which he sits communicates acceptance. They come face to face with the mute and encounter themselves” (Witt 8). Although Singer cannot hear, Mick ironically imagines him as the only person who possesses the ability to understand the musical environment and its transcendence from the battle cries of the soul. Depicting the fragility of language and the ultimate failure of self-expression, it is up to Singer, incompetent at both speaking and hearing, to teach Mick the art of communicating with others to assuage spiritual isolation. It is not through the clamor of cities, but through the individual search for spiritual connections that we can finally escape this perennial loneliness. Through Mick's artistic deification of Singer, he further accentuates the element of idealism and articulates the author's view on delusional deification, as Mick ultimately comes closer than any other character to recognizing that his views of Singer are simply an illusion. The musical notes grow silent as Mick matures and the jarring reality of society looms, “everyone…knew there was no real God…When he thought about what he imagined God to be, he could only see Singer with a long white sheet around him ." him. God was silent…” (McCullers 101-2). In retrospect, Mick Kelley, though young and inexperienced compared to Copeland and Blount, is the only character to analyze his idolatry of Singer. Mick finally realizes his desire to create Singer as a heroic figure who can save and solve the puzzle of existence, and his rational revelation depicts that illusory deification is only a temporary spiritual fulfillment. Thus, Singer's wide range of visitors symbolizes various social, sexual, and racial positions, suggesting that the causes of failure in their individual quests cannot be limited to a certain position, as they all experience discouragement and disillusionment. However, what Copeland, Blount and Mick fail to understand is that the bringer of peace and sanity is not peace itself. Although Singer cushions the painful loneliness of the other characters, he is truly the loneliest “hunter” of all. The man with “eyes as kind and grave as those of a sorcerer” (McCullers 67), makes the same mistake as his visitors as he deifies and idolizes his companion Antonapoulos, a psychologically incompetent man who neither replicates his feelings nor understands them. One critic describes the relationship between Antonapoulos and Singer as “a human relationship of love and sexuality far removed from so-called normal relationships… it is an unconsummated and, indeed, sexually unacknowledged relationship>.