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 * Carson McCullers by Caitlyn Waltemeyer**

Carson McCullers was an amazing American writer. She wrote many short stories, plays, essays, and even poetry. From reading the article "Carson McCullers: The Aesthetic of Pain" by Louis D. Rubin Jr. Carson McCullers various themes are often repeated throughout her novels. Her themes were marked by loneliness, and isolation. Her novels often depicted small town life which was located in the South of the 1940s. She wrote fiction and her essential element in her novels feature with the outcasts of the South. Her bizarre characters suffer from loneliness that deal with compassion. In her novel //Reflections in a Golden Eye// is a eccentric tale of betrayal, lust, perversion on a southern based army camp. The characters deal with hatred, loneliness, lies, and cheating. Carson McCullers received a lot of cruel criticism from many of the people in her hometown. Her characters include tortured adolescents, homosexuals, and outcasts from different society's. Many of the people often see a negative view of themselves in the unadapted characters of her novels, as well as critics who disagree about her achievements. The novel //The Member of the Wedding,// is a sensitive portrayal of a twelve-year-old named Frankie Addams who lives in a small southern town with a widowed father who ignores her. She lives with an African American house cook, and her cousin who treat Frankie with love and respect. Frankie's life feels out of place, and has trouble dealing with self esteem issues, and her identity.Her ideal dream is to run away to the Alaskan wilderness to follow her brother. //The Member of the Wedding// is only one of two plays written by Carson McCullers's and the most successful one as well.Critics have fought over this novel and how they view it. Some critics agree that is was a masterpiece that is well-timed, moving, and absorbing. Others say her novel had no point of focus, untraditional structure, had forms of racism, and lack of action. Although this novel had different views on how it should be portrayed, significantly the play is now considered historically important. McCullers is to be considered a member of the "Southern Gothic" tradition in American literature. Carson is compared to other writers such as Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. Carson McCuller's is known for her outstanding novels such as __The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,__ __Wunderkind__, __The Member of the Wedding,__ and __The Ballad of the Sad Cafe.__ Many critics agree and disagree for her standing in American Literature, but her novels and writings are amazing and unique. Her themes of isolation, loneliness and people who were known as outcasts from their own society make Carson McCullers an outstanding author. Throughout her life as a child, and growing up around different people, is what relates and influenced her to write novels. As she once said " I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen." (McCullers) It can be taken into great consideration the importance of her life along with the lives that she has wrote about. If it did not seem important to Carson McCuller's some of America's most established novels and stories could not be appreciated today.To some people her twisted stories became the vision of Southern writing. Her writings are pieces of art, art that is viewed to give us a better understanding of Carson McCullers.


 * Annotated Bibliography**

Rubin, Louis D., Jr. "Carson McCullers: The Aesthetic of Pain." //DISCovering Authors//. Online ed. Detroit : Gale, 2003. //Student// //Resource Center// //- Gold//. Gale. Fuquay Varina High School/WCPS/. 20 May. 2008. Http://www.galenet.com/servlet/srcx.// The article “The Aesthetic of Pain,” in The Virginia Quarterly Review contains a variety of information on Carson McCullers. In this excerpt it explains the depiction of human isolation in McCullers’s novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. In this novel it is located in a small-sized Southern city in the late 1930’s, where there is little doing at night and none of the people involved in the story are content or very hopeful. In this article it describes how Carson uses Southern literature in this novel and how the characters are affected by it. McCullers Southern literature is filled with many portrayals of the characters. It is an essential element in Southern fiction and especially in Carson McCullers’s work. Carson’s situation lies at the heart of her relationship with the South, and nowhere is it more pathetic than by her. That is why in her novel the people do and say what they want to do. That is the only source of the pain. I plan on using this information to describe in details on how Southern literature is depicted in Carson McCullers’s work. I would recommend this source to anyone who is looking for information about The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and who wants to go into depth about how Southern literature is viewed in this novel. //Hart, Jane. "Carson McCullers, Pilgrim of Loneliness."// DISCovering Authors//. Online ed. Detroit : Gale, 2003. //Student Resource Center - Gold//. Gale. Fuquay Varina High School/WCPS/. 20 May. 2008. Http://www/galenet.com/servlet/srcx The article “Pilgrim of Loneliness,” in //The Georgia Review// comments on the theme of loneliness in McCullers’s works. The theme of loneliness that is portrayed in this article is a constant one. It reoccurs if not openly with a character but, with the imagery or description. The towns in her novels are always small and confined; they are lonely Southern towns where desperation and hunger reside in people. In this article it describes how every detail is selected, and every aspect of a description is well chosen in Carson’s books. I plan on using this information to describe how loneliness plays a major role in her novels. I would definitely recommend this article to anyone who wants to clearly understand McCullers’s vision on loneliness and how it affects the way she writes. **Annotated Bibliography** Bloom, Harold. ”Modern Critical Views” __Carson McCullers__ .Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. 1986. 7-142. This book is organized in a variety of information on Carson McCullers. It has facts and opinions by different authors on the way they view her work. This book also contains historical facts on the chronology of her life as well. It describes the different books that she has published and how other authors perceive them. Also in this book it describes Carson’s short stories and children’s poems. I plan on using this information from this book to describe the stories, poems, and novels she has published in detail. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand her novels, and how other authors view and explain them. Unger, Leonard. “A Collection of Literary Biographies” __American Writers.__ Ed. Leonard Unger. New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974. 1-608. This book contains a wide variety of information on her whole life. The book talks about her childhood, and her life growing up as a young writer. Throughout the book, it describes how she thought and produced her most famous work. It has information on when and how she published her novels. This book also describes in details about the setting and plot of all her novels. The book gives a complete overview of how she grew up and became this amazing author. I plan on using this information to describe her life as a child, and how she produced such amazing novels. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about the way she grew up. I would also recommend this book to anyone who wants to know about her life and how she published her novels.