Author:
Duan Zhang

Doi: 10.26480/ccsj.01.2020.08.12

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Spiritual isolation and loneliness have always been the main topic of the works of the southern American writer Carson McCullers. Her superb literary creation lies in that, she not only integrates the theme of loneliness between lines of her works, but also strongly echoes and deepens that theme by use of brilliant narrative skills. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is such a masterpiece on loneliness, decorated and permeated with exquisite narrative strategy. By means of the narrative theories of Gérard Genette and Shen Dan, and with NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE as the starting point, the present paper tries to study the unique narrative strategy framed within this work. This paper points out that, McCullers’ portray of characters from many aspects, and her narration from multiple perspectives in this work, not only greatly exalt the work’s narrative tension and aesthetic effect, but also deeply reflect the internal perplexity and solitary state of mind of those people living in American South after the Civil War.