Previous
Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Miss Lonelyhearts, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religion and Morality in Modern Society
The Illusion of the American Dream
The Limitations of Love
Isolation and Madness
Summary
Analysis
Following his time with Mrs. Doyle, Miss Lonelyhearts becomes physically sick and can’t leave his bed for three days. On the third day of his illness, Betty comes to check on him and deliver soup. Miss Lonelyhearts apologizes for his actions the last time he visited her, and Betty tells him that his job at the newspaper has taken too much of a toll on him. Miss Lonelyhearts tries to explain that leaving his job wouldn’t solve his problem because he’ll always be haunted by the letters that people have written. He tells Betty that even though he used to consider his job a joke, like the rest of the newspaper staff, he realized that the people who wrote to him for advice were genuinely suffering, took him seriously, and that he needed to examine his personal values. Betty tells him to go back to sleep.
In his conversation with Betty, Miss Lonelyhearts is surprisingly candid about what he’s feeling. He explicitly states that he feels tormented by the letters he’s received from Lonelyhearts readers, and being exposed to other people’s suffering has caused him to reexamine the ways in which he lives his own life. Despite his honesty and clarity, however, Betty demonstrates that she’s not able to fully understand him. Although she agrees that his job has taken a toll on him, she doesn’t seem capable or willing to talk about the details. Similarly, it’s ironic that Miss Lonelyhearts believes he has begun to reexamine his personal values, as he has continually acted in questionable and immoral ways.
Themes
Shrike suddenly appears, and Betty leaves Miss Lonelyhearts’s apartment without saying goodbye. Shrike launches into a scattered sermon about how Miss Lonelyhearts is sick of his life in New York and how his life would look if he lived in the South Seas with a beautiful maiden. Miss Lonelyhearts pretends to be asleep, but Shrike carries on, suggesting art, drugs, and suicide as potential answers to his problems. Finally, although Miss Lonelyhearts has previously noted that Shrike finds Christianity a joke, Shrike arrives at what he calls his lecture’s most important idea: that the church is our only hope.
Shrike’s appearance and erratic lecture mirrors Miss Lonelyhearts’s work as the advice column writer for their newspaper. Instead of suggesting legitimate fixes to Miss Lonelyhearts’s struggles, Shrike suggests a slew of unserious options, ranging from the largely unattainable (living in the South Seas with a beautiful maiden) to even suicide. Concluding his diatribe by endorsing a church that he doesn’t believe in, Shrike further alienates Miss Lonelyhearts despite acting as though he’s someone who should be able to understand.
Themes
