Miss Lonelyhearts Summary
Nathanael West

Everything you need to understand or teach Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West.

Miss Lonelyhearts Summary & Study Guide

Miss Lonelyhearts Summary

Many themes help define this spiritual problem as it appears in the Depression. From suffering come false visions and numb despair. The narrow innocence of Betty, Miss Lonelyhearts's girlfriend, brings a failed return to Eden on the farm. Shrike's comic cynicism, in denying all escape from suffering, fails absolutely to help. Miss Lonelyhearts's vision of religious order fails to communicate to his correspondents because, due to Shrike's omnipresent rhetoric, among other things, the...

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Nathanael West Biographies (5)

Nathanael West

525 words, approx. 2 pages

The work of the American novelist Nathanael West (1903-1940) is strikingly original. It is characterized by its use of mythic themes in contemporary settings, terrifying symbolism, profound pessimism,... Read more

Nathanael West

1,135 words, approx. 4 pages

The writer who was to become known as Nathanael West was born Nathan Weinstein in New York City; he was the first son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. His individuality early exhibited itself in his indi... Read more

Nathanael West

6,028 words, approx. 21 pages

Nathanael West wrote four novels, The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931), Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin (1934), and The Day of the Locust (1939), a play, Goo... Read more

Nathanael West

5,361 words, approx. 18 pages

Early in the twentieth century it was quite common for young Jewish men, especially those whose parents had come from Poland and Russia, to change their names. In an effort to make it easier to succee... Read more

Nathanael West

6,308 words, approx. 22 pages

Biography EssayAll around him he saw hypocrisy, lack of communication, the failure of love to heal. He saw the garish, bizarre, erotic, and grotesque replacing the standard criteria for defining a wor... Read more

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Miss Lonelyhearts SummaryNathanael West