@article{oai:twcu.repo.nii.ac.jp:00024276,
 author = {江口, 裕子},
 issue = {2},
 journal = {英米文学評論},
 month = {},
 note = {Mrs. Carson McCullers is a writer who is deeply concerned with the loneliness of mankind. Loneliness is a recurring theme throughout her novels and short stories as if it were a central inner difficulty of the author to which her thought cannot but return. There is no doubt as to the uniqueness of Mrs. McCullers' artistic qualities. Her haunting, intense personality and exceptional sensibility primarily distinguish her from mediocre writers as the born artist. She has also the ability to recreate a world of reality with lapidary precision, and moreover to make it quite her own. When her poetic sensibility gives color and nuance to her unique perceptions of the world about her, common people and events become no longer common, daily experiences take on a special meaning and value, and the world of every-day reality is transformed into her own special world which is richly symbolic as well as convincingly realistic. In her personal, limited world, how does she develop the theme of loneliness? From what aspect does she approach this loneliness? And what technique does she use to make us fully understand the intention of her work? To study these questions, I have chosen her four main stories; namely, "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," "Reflections in a Golden Eye," "The Member of the Wedding," and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe". The central theme running through these four novels is, as mentioned above, the increasing awareness of individual loneliness and the hungry search for communication between man and man. The men and the women in Mrs. McCullers' novels, however, seem to fail to break through the barriers of separation and are unable to establish communication, and therefore suffer with a deeper sense of isolation which is caused by their failure. Mrs. McCullers shows her talent in her clever, thoughtful choice of settings and characters, for we notice that the theme of human isolation is symbolically presented both in settings and in characters. The settings of her novels are, for the most part, lonely, desolate, towns in the deep South, estranged from the other parts of the world. The characters are by no means ordinary people, but they are the physically deformed and dwarfed, the abnormal, the defeated and the frustrated, and being separated from the rest of humanity, they are the most lonely people in the world. The most urgent need for self-expression and for human love is embodied in these social misfits. We become aware that both settings and characters in Mrs. McCullers' novels function as symbols of isolation, and thus help to strengthen the theme. Would it, then, be possible for these people to escape from individual loneliness and build up a desirable human relation with the rest of the community? Would the urgent need for love and self-expression be fulfilled? To these questions, Mrs. McCullers' answer seems to be in the negative. It is worth noticing that she never depicts any happy aspect of love between two persons, nor does any successful outcome of mutual love appear in her novels. The love treated in them is usually a one-sided love and never requited except with indifference or cold contempt. The lover is always frustrated in love, and comes to know that his love is a solitary thing. Mrs. McCullers seems to be well aware of the ironical truth that, as the lover wishes to have a closer relation with his beloved, he must feel more lonely, because he comes to recognize more clearly a wide impassable gulf of separation between them. Thus, Mrs. McCullers' attitude toward human relations is rather pessimistic, and she seems to be sceptical about the consummation of love between a couple of persons. In spite of such a tragic view of humanity, her novels do not strike a note of utter despair, nor are they tinged with bitterness or cynicism. Why? It is interesting to note that there are two opposite elements coexisting in her novels: one is darker, pessimistic and abnormal, and the other is brighter, optimistic and wholesome. That which makes up for the pessimistic note in her novels and gives us a hopeful im, pression is the author's positive belief in love and compassion for humanity, especially for the hurt and the lonely. It is natural that love should be closely related to loneliness, and Mrs. McCullers' theme of loneliness, viewed from a different standpoint, turns to be the theme of love. Mrs. McCullers seems to believe that love alone, after all, can quench the thirst of the lonely, and can give them strength to live even if momentarily. She is optimistic enough in that she has no doubt or mistrust about the real existence or the capacity of love itself, even though she cannot deny the truth that human loneliness is an inescapable condition of man and that even love is seldom able to bridge the gulf of separation between man and man.},
 pages = {145--177},
 title = {Carson McCullers : 孤独と愛について},
 volume = {6},
 year = {1959}
}