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Letters come to symbolize the inescapable distance between Miss Lonelyhearts and those who write to him. Although they are bids for sympathy and understanding, the letters that Miss Lonelyhearts receives are, after all, mere approximations of their writers’ pain and suffering; the letters cannot truly represent the full extent of the letter-writers’ experiences, just as Miss Lonelyhearts can never truly understand their pain or legitimately help them, as he is too caught up in his own emotional turmoil. Mrs. Doyle and Mr. Doyle, for example, write letters to Miss Lonelyhearts in attempts to start a conversation and connect with him, but Miss Lonelyhearts’s relationships with both characters culminate in intense acts of violence, suggesting that an unbridgeable distance permanently separates Miss Lonelyhearts from those who write him letters.
Letters Quotes in Miss Lonelyhearts
The Miss Lonelyhearts quotes below all refer to the symbol of Letters. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
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The letters were no longer funny. He could not go on finding the same joke funny thirty times a day for months on end. And on most days he received more than thirty letters, all of them alike, stamped from the dough of suffering with a heart-shaped cookie knife.
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Chapter 5
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When the old man still remained silent, he took his arm and twisted it. Gates tried to tear him away, but he refused to let go. He was twisting the arm of all the sick and miserable, broken and betrayed, inarticulate and impotent. He was twisting the arm of Desperate, Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband.
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Chapter 8
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He was too tired to be annoyed by her wide-eyed little mother act and let her feed him with a spoon. When he had finished eating, she opened the window and freshened the bed. As soon as the room was in order, she started to leave, but he called her back.
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Chapter 13
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Miss Lonelyhearts stood it with the utmost serenity; he was not even interested. What goes on in the sea is of no interest to the rock.
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Chapter 15
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He did not understand the cripple’s shout and heard it as a cry for help from Desperate, Harold S. Catholic-mother, Broken-hearted, Broad-shoulders, Sick-of-it-all, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband. He was running to succor them with love.
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Letters Symbol Timeline in Miss Lonelyhearts
The timeline below shows where the symbol Letters appears in Miss Lonelyhearts. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...of a New York newspaper advice column, Miss Lonelyhearts struggles to respond to the day’s letters. Although he initially got into this business as a joke, he no longer finds humor...
(full context)
Chapter 8
...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...
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Chapter 10
...York, Miss Lonelyhearts realizes that Betty has failed to heal him—he simply can’t forget the letters that people have written to him. When they return to the city, Miss Lonelyhearts becomes...
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