Miss Lonelyheart Victim Quotes

Miss Lonelyhearts The Victim of Humanities Letters
In Nathanael West’s novel Miss Lonelyhearts, the main character is presented as a victim of his own work, as he tries to help people by addressing letters written to him in the advice column in the New York Post-Dispatch. The people who write to Miss Lonelyhearts usually write about situations that can not be easily helped with which causes him to feel burdened. Due to the bleak vision of humanity presented in the letters and the constant harassment from his boss, Shriek, Miss Lonelyhearts becomes a victim of his own work; which ultimately leads to his death by the hands of Mr. Doyle, who would have never been involved in his life if it were not for the letters and the column.
When Miss Lonelyhearts

When they ask for bread don’t give them crackers as does the Church, and don’t , like the Stated, tell them to eat cake. Explain that man cannot live by bread alone and give them stones. Teach them to pray each morning: “Give us this day our daily stone”. (West 12)
After Shrieks’ speech Miss Lonelyhearts clarifies that “He had given his readers many stones; so many, in fact, that he had only one left-the stone that had formed in his gut” which is from his sense of building guilt about not being able to provide the words in which his readers needed to hear to reassure them that life will get better (West 12). It is because of this that Miss Lonelyhearts is a victim of his work since he feels the need to offer others advice in situations that are so bleak he internalizes the pain as an illness from not being able to offer people real solutions to their

Doyle who is the crippled husband of Fay Doyle whom he had an affair with. Mr. Doyle gives him a letter about his own troubles and as Miss Lonelyhearts reads the letter he embraces him by holding his hand and shows friendship for the first time in the story. Miss Lonelyhearts decides to join the Doyles for dinner one night and as Mrs. Doyle drinks she begins to make it obvious that she wants him even though he is trying to make a statement to the to help solve the problems they had addressed in the letter. When Mr. Doyle leaves to go get Gin, Mrs. Doyle tries sexual advances at Miss Lonelyhearts until he physically beats her down to get her to stop then he leaves abruptly. Later on Miss Lonelyhearts attends a party at Shrieks apartment where Shriek finds a letter addressed to Miss Lonelyhearts and then reads it after Miss Lonelyhearts has already left. The letter was signed Doyle and it claimed that Miss Lonelyhearts had tried to rape Mrs. Doyle and he wrote that “you ought to have your brains blown out”(West 130). At the end of the story Miss Lonelyhearts has a religious experience and finally believes that he can write in the column because now God approves of his work. Feeling excited about his new found belief in himself when the doorbell rang and he saw Mr. Doyle he assumed that “God had sent him so that Miss Lonelyhearts could perform a miracle and be certain of his conversion. It was a sign. He