McCullers was just 22 when this first novel was published in 1940. It centers on the relationships between a lonely deaf-mute, John Singer, and four other characters living in a small Georgia town in the 1930s. These are Mick Kelly, a
sensitive, adolescent white girl; aged Dr. Copeland, the hurt and
frustrated Negro; Jake Blount, a nervous and unbalanced whiskey-head;
and Biff Brannon, whose consciousness is one mass of timid
bewilderment. All these characters and many more feel that the deaf
mute alone understands them; they assail his deaf ears with their
troubles and hopes, thereby revealing their intense loneliness and
denied capacity for living. When the deaf mute's friend dies in an insane asylum, he commits
suicide, and act which deprives the confessional of its priest. The
lives of Miss McCullers' characters are resolved thus: Mick Kelly is
doomed to a life of wage slavery in a five-and-ten-cent store; Dr.
Copeland is beaten by a mob of whites when he protests against the
injustices meted out to his race; Jake Blount stumbles off alone,
wistfully, to seek a place in the south where he can take hold of
reality through Marxism; and Biff Brannon steels himself to live a life
of emptiness. Hovering
mockingly over her story of loneliness in a small town are primitive
religion, adolescent hope, the silence of deaf mutes - and all of these
give the violent colors of the life she depicts a sheen of weird
tenderness.
No comments:
Post a Comment