An Enduring Character

Truman Capote builds a special character in Holly Golightly in his short story, “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”. She is at once promiscuous, superficial, but also romantic and innocent at the same time whose character is built as much by her own actions as the words of others.

Holly’s unique effect on people is developed by Joe Bell’s anecdote of what Mr. Yunioshi told him about his travels in Africa. Just the fact that Mr. Yunioshi offered everything he had to try and buy a sculpture and Joe Bell’s own excitement at the telling the story attributes to this quality. This is accentuated by the African man’s refusal to part with the sculpture.

It is not explicitly stated in the novella, but it is apparent that Holly makes money primarily through services that she gives to men. I am not sure if she is a prostitute, but she definitely hangs around a lot of rich men, who pay her for her company. She wakes up at late hours, and sleeps late. She drinks a lot of alcohol, and uses marijuana. And of course, we always have Madame Saphia Spanella telling her to “do her whoring elsewhere.”

We know that beneath the easygoing, bubbly exterior, she is a conflicted young woman who is too weak for her goals, and too good for her current situation. So, she chooses to marry rich.

Yet, she shows her fragility. She tells Doc that he shouldn’t love a wild thing, because that wild thing will take your heart and fly away. She hates the sight of cages because cages imply that something living will be trapped in it. She buys the narrator the cage he was looking at, but makes him promise that he will never put anything in it. All of these things are simple, childish thoughts that are no less true. Perhaps she was referring to him, as he was struggling as a writer then, and she did not want him to be caged in his own mediocrity. And, she is just nice. Who buys a $350 cage?

Holly is a queen for the lower classs. Everyone below her on the social scale loves her: the narrator, Mr. Yunioshi, Joe Bell, Doc Golightly, Fred, and the African sculptor. But, the rich and corrupt don’t: Rusty Trawler who married intolerable Mag Wildwood from Arkansas, and Jose who left her alone wih nothing except the child that she may or may not have. She also loves her poor brother so much. Fred is the pearl of her heart, and the fact that she can be so selfless is a quality that makes Holly a likeable, and yet pitiful character.

And despite all of her flaws, Capote manages to make her the most enduring character in the entire novella. We openly sympathize with her when she describes the “mean reds” she keeps having and how only Tiffany’s can cure it. We don’t blame her for ringing Mr. Yunioshi, and the narrator’s door at ungodly hours. We do not blame her for leaving. For we knew that she would leave. That scene on the Brooklyn Bridge has a perfect metaphor for her whole idea of a wild thing leaving. As they look out, Holly says, “I love New York, even though it isn’t mine…something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.” And, the narrator said he felt irritatingly like “a tugboat in dry dock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor with whistling and confetti un the air.”—a wonderful line, one that perfectly represents the sorrow in leaving, and the love narrator has for Holly.

But in the end, it is as her name card said: “Holly Golightly, Travelling.” And like the narrator we can only wish her well, and hope she finds the place that she belongs, one day.