The Ballad of the Sad Café

The Ballad of the Sad Café is a haunting tale about a human triangle that falls full circle in an incredible battle. The novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, an imposing southern lady whose bistro serves as the town's gathering spot. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is a love story told by the nostalgic longings and attractions of three whimsical characters: Miss Amelia, Cousin Lymon, and Marvin Macy. McCullers depicts desire as a compulsion, one that is often strong enough to transform people's minds and behaviors. The writer appears to state if the affection is solitary, people, having lost their inspiration to change, will return to their actual selves. The charm of the diverse characters, which is never uncovered by the writer, appears to show that sentiments of affection and fascination are not really sensible or justifiable to others.
Miss Amelia is one of the outstanding character in the story as most of the scenes in the story revolves around her. Miss Amelia is an independent, candid and especially a recluse. She stands six foot one-inch-tall and has a solid, manly form. Her dark eyes are crossed, and whatever is left of her elements are similarly ugly. However, the few people of the little, southern town of Cheehaw acknowledge her peculiarity as a result of the wonderful wine that she offers in her store and for her free doctoring and hand crafted cures. Still, everybody is stunned when the good looking fugitive, Marvin Macy, experiences passionate feelings for her. Marvin is a "striking, valiant, and savage" man who changes his unlawful approaches to win Miss Amelia's affection. As opposed to looting houses he starts going to chapel benefits on Sunday mornings. With an end goal to court Miss Amelia, he learns legitimate behavior, for example, "rising and giving his seat to a woman, and keeping away from swearing and battling". Two years after Marvin's reconstruction, he requests that Miss Amelia marries him. Miss Amelia does not love him but rather consents to the marriage keeping in mind the end goal to fulfill her extraordinary auntie.
After this marriage, Miss Amelia minded her own business, offering her bourbon and doing her doctoring. Until one night when an outsider came to town, a little wiped out hunchback who asserted to be in some far-flung route identified with Miss Amelia. She was benevolent to the hunchback in a way the townspeople had never observed her act: offering him free bourbon and welcoming him to have dinner. He vanished into the upper condos of the building, where Miss Amelia lived, and nobody saw both of them for two days(McCuller 60).
The town was certain she more likely than not killed him, yet they were demonstrated wrong when the hunchback, referred to now as Cousin Lymon, developed looking more advantageous, clean, and in new garments. Miss Amelia began to offer alcohol and supper in the store each night, and abruptly the town had a bistro. Every night unusual Cousin Lymon bounced around making jokes and wickedness, fulfilling everybody feel. The town perceived how well Miss Amelia dealt with him, and trusted that this odd couple might just be infatuated. Cousin Lymon got a share of all that she had, and the main thing Miss Amelia kept from him was the narrative of her marriage to Marvin (McCuller 47). Life went on like this, cheerfully, for a long time, until Henry Macy, Marvin's sibling, gotten a letter from his sibling, saying he'd escaped imprisoning. A month or so after, Cousin Lymon saw an outsider get dropped off before Miss Amelia's building and started to tail him all over town. Miss Amelia, gone for the day on business, comes back to discover a group outside the bistro watching Lymon attempt to engage the outsider, Marvin Macy. She's infuriated.
From that point forward, every morning, Cousin Lymon called for Marvin Macy at his temporary mother's home and afterward failed him for the duration of the day. In the night times, both wound up at the bistro. Miss Amelia did her best to persuade Cousin Lymon again into their coexistence, while at the same time doing all that she could to dispose of Marvin Macy. Nothing worked, and however she was despondent, everything else went ahead of course.
One-day Cousin Lymon declared that Marvin Macy would move in with them. She asserted against her unmistakable inclination and attached a punching sack to a tree limb in the front yard. She started to practice day by day. The town was sitting tight for a battle. On Groundhog Day, the time had come. Both Marvin Macy and Miss Amelia ate thick meat and snoozed in planning. The town accumulated, energized. The bistro floor was cleared of its tables, and at seven o'clock the battle started. Cousin Lymon viewed from his roost on the counter as the two boxed. They were all around coordinated and neither had the high ground for a long while. They started to wrestle, and Miss Amelia stuck him, seeming successful(MCculler 32). Be that as it may, Cousin Lymon cruised from the counter and arrived on Miss Amelia's back, tearing at her neck until she lost her ground. Marvin Macy was then ready to stick her, and win.
Miss Amelia licked her injuries, unfortunately, and dragged her body into bed for the night, while Marvin Macy and Cousin Lymon stole each important thing she had, and wrecked everything else, disassembling her bourbon still and cutting terrible words into the bistro tables. At that point they cleared out a town, never to return (MCculler 43). At the point when Miss Amelia woke to discover this, she blocked the building and was never observed again; the primary indication of her life the lights in the upstairs windows. Presently the town is so exhausting; you should tune into the singing of the tie pose the street, the storyteller says.
In the last segment, headed "The Twelve Mortal Men," we see a bunch of prisoners fixing the interstate and singing together. The music, the storyteller says, is fantastic, primarily because they are singing along.
As many critics have pointed out, The Ballad of the Sad Café reflects McCullers's fascination with freaks, misfits, and grotesques. For her, such characters best embodied the loneliness and isolation that she regarded as the essential condition of human existence. Other themes—all of which bear on the novella's central concern with loneliness—include the failure of communication, the anguish of unrequited love, the psychological phenomenon that causes human beings who are worshiped to despise the worshiper. Others are the the redemptive and transformative effects that even transitory and ultimately doomed love can have on an individual and his or her community. Critics note that McCullers is especially interested in the paradox of shared isolation, a term that describes the relationships among the three most important characters and between the three and their community as well.






Work cited
McCullers, C. (2005). The ballad of the sad café. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.