Queerness
McCullers expounds, “Then the spring of that year had been a long queer season. Things began to change and Frankie did not understand this change…There was something about the green trees and flowers of April that made Frankie sad. She did not know why she was sad, but because of this peculiar sadness, she began to realize she ought to leave the town.” The queer ambiance is contributory to Frankie’s unexplainable melancholy. Strangeness is so overwhelming that it denies Frankie optimism; hence, she wishes to relocate to evade the imperceptible queerness.
War
McCullers writes, “Frankie read the war news in the paper, but there were so many foreign places, and the war was happening so fast, that sometimes she did not understand…Sometimes these pictures of the war, the world, whirled in her mind and she was dizzy.” Frankie’s visualization of war contributes to her gloominess. The visualizations are very powerful to the degree that they elicit her unsteadiness. Probably, Frankie is undergoing a psychological crisis.
