While it is debatable as to exactly what the event or situation need be, most of the best novels go beyond just the lives of their characters to include some more important question of interest to society. McCullers has the obvious involvement of the racial issue underlying the more universal yet personal issue of loneliness and ambitious dreams.
It is amazing to me that she handles the inner lives of the black man and woman so well, especially in the year the novel was published, 1940, and McCullers being only twenty-three and white. Her character of Dr. Copeland as a Negro physician upset with his own race of people for being so subservient and accepting of their lot is a volatile issue. Dr. Copeland brings up the same points that the whites of the time felt, and is vehemently trying to stir up the people to overcome these unfair labels. While he is passionate about the cause–to go so far as to focus his speech on Karl Marx at his annual Christmas party–he is pitifully lacking in the sensitivity of understanding his own children. He himself carries his own prejudices, against whites, as he asserts what he calls an "insolence" that he sees in all of them with the only exception being the mute Mr. Singer. His prejudice against his own people may be masked under his self-proclaimed raging love for them.
I wonder if there is some deeper meaning in McCullers’ use of Dr. Copeland as he does not inspire reader empathy as strongly as one would want to cheer on a hero of human rights.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology