Love Poition

"It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whisky is the fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man - then the worth of Miss Amelia's liquor can be understood." (10)

Liquor plays an important role in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. The townspeople love it as well as Cousin Lymon, who enjoys the company and attention that the liquor brings in the cafe. I found this interesting since liquor is usually associated with substituting sadness for bliss, then sooner or later the effect wears off and back to sadness.

Is McCullers making some kind of similarity between liquor and love? Would this story have the same impact if food, another thing that can bring someone happiness, or anything else were used to bring people together? Is there any connection between the description of Amelia's whisky and the characters?

Unrequited Love

“Through the open door the crowd could see her sitting at her desk, her head in the crook of her arm, and she was sobbing with the last of her grating, winded breath.  Once she gathered her right fist together and knocked it three times on the top of her office desk, then her hand opened feebly and lay palm upward and still.”

One of McCuller’s running themes throughout the story is unrequited and isolated love.  McCuller depicts the less relished side of love by subjecting her characters Amelia, Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy to a doomed love that is unreciprocated by their beloved.  While unrequited love leads Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy to a life of lawless action, it leads Amelia to an even more isolated life forever haunted by heartbreak.  This section in the novel is especially important because it marks the moment in which Amelia relinquishes her strength and pride which made her both feared and revered by the townspeople.  Before, her pain could only be seen by a flicker in her eyes but now her indifference to the open door shows she is broken to the point where she can no longer hide her anguish.  Her last hand gesture conveys to the reader that her fight and vigor has fled and in its place has settled the perpetual aches of an unrequited love.          

Why did Amelia, whose strength and independence was at one point notable, allow herself to make such an emotional investment into Cousin Lymon giving him the power to bring her to ruins?  

Lover and Beloved: The Chorus to The Ballad of The Sad Cafe

"First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons-- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow, every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. " (25)

This passage is key because it outlines the nature of the three main relationships of the story: the relationship between Miss Amelia and Marvin Macy, the relationship between Miss Amelia and Cousin Lymon, and the relationship between Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy. We see in each of these relationships that there is in fact a lover and a beloved. Thus in this passage and throughout the story Carson McCullers demonstrates a belief that the concept of love is defined  and created by inequality. As the story plays out, we watch the way the dichotomy of "lover" and "beloved" brings distress to each person involved, and how it causes irrational behavior. McCullers's idea of love is not one of health, nor of happiness, but of continuous struggle.

Discussion Question:
How does the role of "lover" or "beloved" manifest itself in the behavior of each character as they exist in each role?

Opposites Attract

"There is a type of person who has a quality about him that sets him apart from other and more ordinary human beings. Such a person has an instinct which is usually found only in small children, an instinct to establish immediate and vital contact between himself and all things in the world. Certainly the hunchback was of this type" (20).

 The relationship between Miss Amelia, the hunchback, and Marvin Macy is that of a love triangle. While  the "love" is not always romantic, each character is allured by, or is drawn to, the "oppositeness" of another character. For example, Miss Amelia develops love for the hunchback because because he is everything she is not. His social and child-like personality paired with his simple mischeviousness nicely compliments her need for oder. Similarly, Cousin Lymon finds excitement in Marvin Macy because his character appeals to his interest in crime. While I'm skeptical to touch on the relationship between Marvin Macy and Miss Amelia, I think Marvin's interest in Amelia stems from her orderly life. She grew up in a nice home and has a lot going for her, yet she also has a "badass" side to her. I feel that Marvin, a hard criminal, is drawn to her ability to balance these traits, something he is unable to do.

Why do you think Marvin Macy is initially drawn to Miss Amelia?