Poem

Quote #1 "Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don't love and don't have peace." (1.3.120)

Portia's idea sounds nice until you realize that in terms of the book, it's just plain wrong. Characters like Copeland and Mick experience love so intensely that it gives them no peace and does in fact nearly kill them.

Quote #2 What would Portia say if she knew that always there had been one person after another? And every time it was like some part of her would bust in a hundred pieces. But she had always kept it to herself and no person had ever known. (1.3.128-29)

Now for your daily dose of ambiguity. Does this passage mean that Mick never told the people she loved that she did love them, or does it mean she never told people like Portia that she has loved before? Perhaps it's both? What do you think, Shmoopers?

Quote #3 The tears came up in his eyes and he reached for his glasses to try to hide them. Portia saw and went up to him quickly. She put her arms around his head and pressed her cheek to his forehead. "I done hurt my Father's feelings," she said softly. (1.5.73-74)

That Portia has a pretty big heart. And it's clear here that she loves her father. This brief moment helps shine a sympathetic light on Copeland, whose domineering attitude and poor decisions often irk us. But here, despite the bad things he has done, we still feel for him and even like him.

Quote #4 "Them three little children is just like some of my own kinfolks. I feel like I done really raised Bubber and the baby. And although Mick and me is always getting into some kind of quarrel together, I haves a real close fondness for her, too." (1.5.106)

In a way, Portia is the closest thing Mick has to a consistent mother figure, though the two of them fight like sisters, too. There's some love there, for sure.

Quote #5 She pounded the same muscle with all her strength until the tears came down her face. But she could not feel this hard enough. (2.1.133)

After hearing the symphony, Mick is so overcome with emotion that she tries to physically harm herself. It's as if she loves the music so much that she doesn't quite know how to show it or express it. Still, we think there are probably better options than punching yourself. But we're just spit balling here.

Quote #6 Why is it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? [...] Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? [...] Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved – so that the one who has gone is not really dead [...] (2.2.8)

For Biff, love is about survival. It's fitting, then, that he is the last man standing in the novel.

Quote #7 The love she felt was so hard that she had to squeeze him to her until her arms were tired. In her mind she thought about Bubber and music together. It was like she could never do anything good enough for them. (2.5.155)

Love, music, Bubber. It's all the same to Mick, and it's all just a little bit beyond her reach. For Mick, love seems painful, like she is always reaching for something, but she can never have it.

Quote #8 The faces of his suffering people moved in a swelling mass before his eyes. And as he steered the automobile slowly down the street his heart turned with this angry, restless love. (2.6.10)

Take that, First Corinthians! So much for "love is patient, love is kind." Here, love is mad, messy and painful.

Quote #9 That was all he wanted for himself – to give to her. Biff's mouth hardened. He had done nothing wrong but in him he felt a strange guilt. Why? The dark guilt in all men, unreckoned and without a name. (2.8.68)

Biff's mouth says it all here, and we're not talking about his words. The fact that his mouth hardens shows his guilt and anxiety. It's as if he is steeling himself against his feelings. This isn't the first time The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter has relied on physical details to show a character's feelings, and it won't be the last, so make sure you look for other moments like this one as well.

Quote #10 In the morning the first thing she would think of was him. Along with music. When she put on her dress she wondered if she would see him that day. She used some of Etta's perfume or a drop of vanilla so that if she met him in the hall she would smell good. (2.9.17)

Mick's teenage crush on Singer is innocent and sweet, but it's also quite sad. Sure, she'll grow out of it eventually, but for now, she is pining for a man who can neither hear her or speak to her. 

Quote #11 "Lemme go. Sure I love you. Ain't you my sister?" "I know. But suppose I wasn't your sister. Would you love me then?" George backed away. (2.14.52-54)

If this conversation made you a wee bit uncomfortable, Shmoopers, well, you're not alone. Mick's love for her brother is disturbing, to say the least. But we think she's really after something else here. Affirmation, maybe. Or the security of knowing she is loved for herself, and not just because she's family

A N D N E W

Quote #1 The kid Mick picked at the front of her blouse to keep the cloth from rubbing the new, tender nipples beginning to come out on her breast. (1.2.125)

Biff creepily hones in on Mick's discomfort with hitting puberty. Biff might be recognizing discomfort in Mick because he himself has a lot of discomfort with his sexuality. Frankly, we do, too, because he spends far too much time in the novel eyeing the young Mick.

Quote #2 "That's why I wear shorts. I'd rather be a boy any day, and I wish I could move in with Bill." (1.3.82)

Mick bucks at the convention that she look or act a certain way, or become a wife and mother in the future. She doesn't want to be assessed as a typical girl. She has her own path in mind.

Quote #3 She stood in front of the mirror a long time, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other. [...] She didn't feel like herself at all. She was somebody different from Mick Kelly entirely. (2.1.47, 49)

Though Mick often defies stereotypes, in this scene, she's just like your typical girl in a classic teen movie. You know, the ugly-duckling-who-suddenly-becomes-a-swan scene? But we can't forget that she has more on her mind than winning over Freddie Prinze Jr. In this scene, she seems more worried about what her new look says about herself. She is experiencing what it means to be feminine and beautiful for the first time.

Quote #4 He wanted to reach out his hand and touch her sunburned, tousled hair – not as he had ever touched a woman. In him there was an uneasiness and when he spoke to her his voice had a rough, strange sound. (2.2.1)

Biff, dude, did you learn nothing from Humbert Humbert? Biff isn't nearly as creepy, of course, but his physical reactions to Mick point to an odd sort of attraction, and it makes both Biff and usvery uncomfortable.

Quote #5 And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes. (2.2.91)

Biff is not exactly the most progressive, forward thinking guy on the planet. But he does seriously question the way society views gender and sexuality in a way that was certainly ahead of his time. He starts transforming his own identity and pushing the boundaries of what's considered proper.

Quote #6 "And Father, that sure is one bad, wicked place. They got a man sells tickets on the bug – but they also got these strutting, bad-blood, tail-shaking nigger gals and these here red satin curtains and – " (2.3.13)

Portia's description of the bordello where Willie gets into serious trouble reveals class, gender, and race bias on her part.

Quote #7 Certain whims he had ridiculed in Alice were now his own. Why? (2.8.8)

After Alice's death, Biff takes on some of her feminine qualities, and we never get a real explanation for it. Perhaps that's because Biff himself doesn't really understand his new habits and whims. Sometimes, he seems downright ashamed of them. 

Quote #8 It was like her head was broke off her body and thrown away. And her eyes looked up straight into the blinding sun while she counted something in her mind. And then this was the way. This was how it was. (2.11.99-100)

Mick seems almost dissociated from her body when she loses her virginity. It's a huge moment for the teenage girl, but she seems too young to process it properly, as if her body has grown up before her mind has.

Quote #9 They both took off their bathing-suits. Harry had his back to her. He stumbled and his ears were red. Then they turned toward each other. Maybe it was half an hour they stood there – maybe not more than a minute. Harry pulled a leaf from a tree and tore it to pieces. "We better get dressed." (2.11.85-86)

This scene focuses on the emotional content and the small details of Harry and Mick's encounter, rather than the big picture of what is actually happening. As it turns out, this is pretty much how the novel deals with sex overall – with averted eyes.