The Monstrous Mind of Carson McCullers
             Anyone who has ever read The Heart is Lonely Hunter would know that Carson McCullers has a unique way of writing. Her characters in this novel include deaf-mutes, lunatics, criminals, fanatics, a giant in love with a dwarf, disfigured and distorted people. "McCullers uses bizarre characters to demonstrate how intricately the usual and the unusual are entangled in human nature, and how delicate is the balance of wildly divergent impulses called normality." (Magill, pg. 1218) Carson McCullers southern background and interest in grotesque and alienated individuals is reflected in most of her work.
             Lula Carson McCullers was brought up in a mill town across the Chattahoochee River. Her mother, Marguarite Smith, saw early in McCullers life that she was an "artistic genius" (Magil, pg 1727) and McCullers family often times suffered and did without because of their gifted child. She grew up with a strange kind of shyness and dependence on her mother. Along with McCullers mother, Mary Tucker tutored McCullers in music and became very important in her life. She came to love Mrs. Tucker and after the Tuckers moved away from her home town, McCullers went through anguish and "seemed to experience every break in human contact as personal betrayal or tragedy." (Rollyson, pg. 2046) She was a prominent member of the southern gothic school and rose as a Baptist along with her siblings. Considered a bookish child, McCullers was often considered "eccentric and quirky." (Shuman, pg 976) In 1930 McCullers dropped her first name and began calling herself Carson. At fifteen years after a serious attack of rheumatic fever she wrote an unpublished novel and decided that she was more prone towards writing than music. McCullers engaged in the local color and observed many of the personalities and character types that surrounded her and would later shape the outline of her tales
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