In the following excerpt, Fuller explains how McCullers used the structures and patterns found in the musical conventions of counterpoint and fugue as the framework for her novel to successfully deliver and explicate the novel's theme—the "insurmountable isolation of human beings."

The influence of music manifests itself in a number of ways in Carson McCullers' fiction. While critics in general note the frequent direct references to music in her works, most of them focus on the way music functions as a "minor symbol" and as an "extended correlative" or mirror of theme and character. Few critics, however, have examined music's role as "architectural framework," as Barbara Nauer Folk [in "The Sad Sweet Music of Carson McCullers," Georgia Review, 16, 1962.] calls it. This omission is surprising since, as Virginia Spencer Carr [in her book The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers, 1975] points out, McCullers herself in later...