Carson McCullers plots The Heart is a Lonely Hunter around characters. it is a very tightly structured plot on that basis. She deals with each character in turn in each of the three sections of the novel. The novel covers the span of a little over one year. In that year, Singer loses his great love to an insane asylum and gains four more people in his life. The three sections of the novel cover different parts of the year, but do little more than divide the rising, climax, and falling action of the plot. Yet, this is not a novel of that traditional variety. Since the action of the novel is more interior than exterior, it plots the events in the emotional lives of its characters rather than the events in the fictional world at large.

Table of Contents | Printable Version