Summarizing A Tree A Rock A Cloud

A tree, a Rock, a Cloud by Carson McCullers is a prime time example of the new ideas in philosophy and of feeling isolated. The story starts out bringing out the gothic tradition of a raining and dark day. The story is about a man who is at a bar and does not know how to love anyone. He tries to discover a science of love but is left alone and isolated.The boy enters the café at the beginning of the story and it says the street was "raw, empty street." The story describes the café as having several people in it and in the corner was a man with "half his face down in a beer mug." To me it seems like the author is trying to say that even though in a café full of people there is always someone who is all alone.

This person only has one thing to turn to and that is his beer, he is having no human contact. The story says that most morning someone would speak to the little boy in a friendly way but this morning was different and no one talked to him until he was getting up to leave the dinner. After the man told the boy that he loved him everyone in the café started to laugh. Whenever I do something that I mean to be sincere and the other person or someone around throws it back in my face I feel isolated and alone.

This is what the people in the café did to the man by laughing at him. The story says the man was "serious and sad." The paper boy tried to question the men along the counter but they had went back to their beer or breakfast and did not notice him. The boy probably felt very isolated at this time with people all around but no one noticing him.

The man pulled a photo out of his pocket and it was of a woman whose face had been blurred. This is another way the author is expressing that sense of isolation. The man bent his face down to his mug of beer and let his head rest there.

Leo says that one day the man will drown in his own beer mug. I am not sure if he meant it literally or as if saying that one day the drinking will eventually kill him. The boy asked Leo if the man was drunk by messing up his face and mouthing the word "drunk" to him.

Leo "only raised his eyebrows and turned away to put some pink strips of bacon on the grill." The boy cannot get a straight answer out of anyone and at this point of the story and does not know what to do. The man says "She left me. I came home one night and the house was empty and she was gone. She left me." The man was all alone in an empty house without his wife.

He felt isolated and as if no one in the world knew he was there. The boy asked the man if she ran off with another guy and the man said "why naturally son a woman does not run off like that alone." The man and boy both now know that the man's wife was not alone like he was. That was probably the hardest part for the man to accept that he was isolated and alone while is past wife is out with another person already. Being isolated and lonely is bad enough but when you know that the person you loved is not lonely like you are it hurts even worse in most cases.

Leo insults the man by asking if he had been looking for her for eleven years. The man replies "I was not speaking to you" this is ironic because they are in a small café and he told the owner that. If you don't want others to hear your conversation then you can't talk with a lot of people around in a small location.

The man tells the boy to ignore Leo and this carries on the feeling of isolation throughout the story. The man found him another woman later in the story at a filling station and they were married within three days. This is very weird to me no one gets married that fast and it seems to me that the man just could not be a lone so he married the first woman that came around.

The man was lonely a woman was the one thing that made him feel complete. The man said that he called the woman "Dodo" I am not sure why that was her nick name but it had to mean something. The man said he searched for the woman for two years.

He searched in Tulsa, Atlanta, Chicago, Cheehaw, and Memphis. I know that if I ever went to several states looking for the same girl for two years I would have to be madly in love. That just does not happen all the time and I think the man had some kind of disorder were he had to always have a woman in his life because he searched high and low for this girl. Later in the story it says that the clock on the wall could be heard ticking to me this means that it was so silent in the café that a pen could be heard if it fell. At the end the boy asked Leo if the man was drunk and he said no.

The boy then asked Leo if the man was a dope fiend and Leo said no. The boy at this point in the story does not know what is going on really and tries to see if the man was crazy or on drugs.At the end of the story all the three main characters are lonely and feeling isolated. The boy leaves the café with more questions than answers. Leo is left alone in a empty café not wanting to get close to his regular customers.

The man left the café trying to complete his science of love and find real companionship with someone.