Journalistic Fiction

Despite the fact that the narrator of Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was more of a creative writer, Capote can't hide his journalistic sensibilities when building Holly Golightly's character. The bulk of her character is developed through quotes and dialogue --not always her own --with the balance being left to the narrator's seemingly even-handed observations.

Through her own dialogue Holly is painted as a bubbly, caring, and just a bit shallow playgirl who is at ease with her life style and her own personality. She makes very few non-declarative sentences, and is absolutely positive about everything she says. Her dialogue helps to give the surface value of who she seems to be. The cadence of her speech is clearly an acquired upper-crust: "'Oh, don't be angry, you dear little man: I won't do it again...'"(16). In this same exchange, the one with Mr. Yunioshi, she goes on to show how comfortable she is with the way she spends her life, carelessly calling out that Yunioshi can take pictures, presumably not quite tame ones, of her. Just from this first encounter, we see her as a bubbly play girl without the narrator saying any such thing. Her desire to help everyone she cares about is also shown through her dialogue, especially when she is trying to help the narrator get published.

When the dialogue is between any other character and the narrator shows another, although not a contradictory, side of Holly. O.J. Berman describes her as a "real phony" (27), whatever that means, and goes on to recount a small portion of her past. This conversation gives us a picture of Holly as a young girl who comes from very different roots than one would think, a girl who takes advantage of opportunities but ultimately follows her own desires even at the expense of those opportunities. She's flighty, she may end up ruined, but in the mean time she's going to do exactly what she pleases. Doc Golightly's testimony is shows yet another side of Holly, that of her beginnings as a young, poor orphan who turns into a naive child-bride. She is caring and precocious, and Doc adores her, despite her wildness. he describes her as "exceptional", and assured the narrator that "she knew good-and-well what she was doing..." (50). She was " a real pretty woman. Lively, too. Talky as a jaybird" (51) which fits nicely both with what we know about Holly from herself and from Berman.

Lastly, the narrator takes it upon himself to also show us some of the other evidence he finds as to the character of Holly. He snoops in her garbage and finds torn love letters, showing both that she was popular and that she wasn't completely faithful to any one man. He also found her scrapbook of publicity at her party, the books on horses and baseball (which Holly herself confirmed as sources of research to help her win over men) and followed her into the library to see what books she was reading (another form of research, this time for Jose).

Capote uses his familiar, journalistic style to illustrate Holly's character, specifically using dialogue (her own and that of others) and hard evidence found by the narrator to explore the different sides of her personality. This gives the air of irrefutable truth to our impression, which in turn makes Holly a complete character even though we only really know her for a short time.