The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Lesson Plan

Describe Doctor Copeland’s relationships with his four children. How have his expectations for them shaped these relationships? How does McCullers’s prose evoke the differences between the generations?

Doctor Copeland is a stern, serious man with strong beliefs, and those beliefs directly shape his expectations for his children. Despite his attempts to raise them according to his standards, he believes they have taken after their mother and her “soft” ways. The names he has chosen for two of his male sons—Hamilton and Karl Marx—suggest his high expectations for them. Though Portia visits her father regularly, the reader learns that Doctor Copeland has not properly met...