john singer the heart is a lonely hunter

Play about deaf mute speaks out to audience Cold and occasionally cruel, both self-loathing and self-indulgent, Antonapoulos’s hesitance to communicate or express his feelings makes him an enigma throughout the novel with motivations, feelings, wants, and needs that are never quite made clear.Adapted by Rebecca Gilman The Heart is a Lonely Hunter When Singer learns of Antonapoulos’s death, he takes his own life-illustrating his final, crushing despondency at having watched his friend slowly fade away and perish. While Singer tries desperately to connect physically, emotionally, and linguistically with the only other person who could possibly understand him, Antonapoulos hides behind anger, antagonism, and misanthropy, eventually dying alone in the asylum due to complications from nephritis. Whether or not the relationship between the two men is actually sexual or romantic, what is clear is that it is uneven and imbalanced. Scholars and critics have long speculated on the true nature of Singer and Antonapoulos’s relationship, and some have even posited that the men’s deafness and muteness are allegorical representations of the stifling, alienating, and isolating experience of being homosexual in the Deep South in the late 1930s. He shows Singer little gratitude for his presence or gifts, and talks to his former companion very little. During these visits, Antonapoulos is either sullen, ill, or some combination of the two. Singer begins organizing his life around his periodic visits to the asylum, taking 12-hour train rides and loading his bags with gifts and snacks for his friend. Shortly after the story begins, Antonapoulos’s mental health declines rapidly, and soon his cousin and employer, Charlie Parker, hurries him away to an asylum.

While Singer is devoted to Antonapoulos, Antonapoulos is closed-off, reserved, and rarely emotes with facial expressions or uses sign language to communicate with Singer. At the start of the novel, Antonapoulos and Singer have been living together in the same room-but sleeping in different beds-for upwards of 10 years, though the circumstances of their meeting are never revealed. John Singer’s longtime friend and companion Spiros Antonapoulos is an obese Greek man who, like Singer, is both deaf and mute.

John singer the heart is a lonely hunter