Genre 

Depression-era novel; epistolary; black comedy

Narrator 

Third-person narrator

Climax 

Doyle shoots Miss Lonelyhearts on the stairwell

Protagonist 

Miss Lonelyhearts

Antagonist 

Shrike; the modern world

Setting (time) 

1930s

Setting (place) 

Primarily New York City, with an interlude at a farm in Connecticut

Point of view 

Third person, focusing on the experiences of Miss Lonelyhearts

Tense 

Immediate past tense, though the letters are usually in the present tense

Tone 

Stark, journalistic, tragic

Foreshadowing 

Miss Lonelyhearts notes he will get sick if he thinks about Christ in the first episode