Less visual than earlier chapter headings, this one is more subtle but equally successful in summarizing its main point. The fat thumb is Miss Lonelyhearts’ tongue, symbolizing his inability to communicate with Betty, from whom he seeks salvation. The thumb also implies brutality in Miss Lonelyhearts’ attitude towards Betty. Later, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 4 – Miss Lonelyhearts and the Fat ThumbSummary and Analysis Chapter 3 – Miss Lonelyhearts and the Lamb
This chapter’s heading refers to the Lamb as Christ, to Miss Lonelyhearts himself, and to the sacrificial lamb in his second dream. The focus is on Miss Lonelyhearts’ pursuit of the lamb, which he will kill clumsily. Frustrated by his inability to help his readers and tormented by Shrike’s degradation […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 3 – Miss Lonelyhearts and the LambSummary and Analysis Chapter 2 – Miss Lonelyhearts and the Dead Pan
The heading of Chapter 1 presented a picture of Miss Lonelyhearts sitting alone, listening to a barrage of desperate and unanswerable voices. The second chapter’s heading creates an image of Shrike as a figure looming over Miss Lonelyhearts’ world. On the surface, “dead pan” refers to Shrike’s expressionless face as […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 2 – Miss Lonelyhearts and the Dead PanSummary and Analysis Chapter 1 – Miss Lonelyhearts, Help Me, Help Me
The first chapter’s caption heading is one of the novel’s best. It suggests Miss Lonelyhearts’ isolation as he sits at his desk while disembodied voices cry at him in desperation for help which he cannot give. As the novel begins, Miss Lonelyhearts is mockingly identified with Christ by Shrike, the […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 1 – Miss Lonelyhearts, Help Me, Help MeCharacter List
Miss Lonelyhearts The novel’s otherwise unnamed twenty-six-year-old protagonist; a newspaper reporter turned advice columnist, he seeks faith for himself and his readers, but he never truly finds it. Willie Shrike Miss Lonelyhearts’ editor, a corrosively cynical intellectual who enjoys deflating and tormenting Miss Lonelyhearts and ridiculing all human and social […]
Read more Character ListAbout Miss Lonelyhearts
Nathanael West first got his idea for Miss Lonelyhearts in 1929 when a friend who wrote an advice column for the Brooklyn Eagle showed him some of the agonized, pathetic, illiterate letters he received. West was deeply moved, and taking these letters with complete seriousness, he immediately began to plan […]
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