LITERATURE: McCullers’ The Heart… – Plot

McCullers must have been born with a pen in her chubby little hand.  I can’t believe how well the story has been plotted out.

In the first couple of chapters, we meet the five main characters and three or four minor ones, basically they know each other or meet during this time, and all live within this small neighborhood.  As the story unfolds, McCullers takes us along through the heads of each of them individually, therefore giving us some insight into their own thinking as well as their insight into the other characters as they come across them.

Then she brings them all together. 

First, in an awkward chance meeting in Singer’s room, then a party and a more sad occasion when Dr. Copeland’s son Willie loses both feet as a result of an insane punishment for a minor infraction in prison.  Dr. Copeland is very ill and bedridden, but still fired up with the need to "free" his people.  Jake Blount, an unlikely co-conspirator, ends up being one of the few that accepts Copeland’s dreams.  But even here, there is disagreement; even here where their hearts seem to meet, they find they are still alone:

They stared at each other in bitter disappointment and anger.  There was the rattle of a wagon in the street outside.  Jake swallowed and bit his lip. (p. 261)

There is more than the how-to plans involved in the not seeing eye to eye.  Jake fervently wants to help all the oppressed, the little man in this country.  Dr. Copeland is focused only on his own people.  Each held the hope that in the other they had finally found an ally. This coming together and being held apart is a sadder form of loneliness than just going one’s own way.

McCullers uses this dramatic scene to fully extent beyond a meeting of minds and separation.  She closes it with an angry argument before she moves on to another character, but leaves us hanging with this:

The bright yellow sun was at the window.  Doctor Copeland’s head fell back on the pillow.  His neck twisted at a broken angle, a fleck of bloody foam on his lips.  Jake looked at him once before, sobbing with violence, he rushed headlong from the room.   (p. 262)