Finding Dostoevsky's “Idiot” in Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

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Notes

¹A few scattered comments do exist. Oliver Evans points out John Singer's resemblance to Myshkin (70–85), which I discuss. General comparisons between McCullers and Dostoevsky appear in Bloshteyn (1–15) and Pachmuss. Rowan Williams has also noted, in a tantalizingly brief footnote: “It is worth comparing the shadows around the role of Myshkin in The Idiot with the complex central character, the deaf-mute, in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (146). To my knowledge, no existing studies focus exclusively on Dostoevsky's impact on McCullers.

²Since so many versions of the novel exist, I have included the section, chapter, and page number from which the quote is taken.

³“It is clear,” writes Michael Katz, “that the author is portraying sympathetically the existence of a strong homophilic and/or homoerotic bond between these two male characters” (245). See also Børtnes 118–20.

⁴ Reflections in a Golden Eye was dedicated to Annemarie in 1940, and The Ballad of the Sad Café was dedicated to Diamond in 1941—the same year when McCullers described herself as “a cross between” Myshkin and Rogozhin. She also wrote her essay on the Russian realists in the summer of 1941. It seems that McCullers turned to Dostoevsky—and to The Idiot in particular—during an especially trying emotional period in her life.