Breakfast at Tiffany's: Ordinary yet Extraordinary Characters

While reading Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, I was struck by a certain quirkiness in his characters. From a certain perspective, all of Capote's characters, including the nameless speaker, seem rather average or ordinary -- they are all living life in New York as is expected of their respective social class and circumstances. However, the way Capote paints them, giving fine details that ultimately outline their respective characters, gives them an allure that is almost surreal to me.
Describing Holly's follies, not only in what she says and does, but what she wears, is an example, just as is Joe Bell’s “disagreeable” personality, and the specific peculiarities of other characters. Portraying each character’s life and reaction to said life maps them out in a way that I don’t often find in American novels. In fact, Capote’s writing reminds me of many British fiction pieces I have read and often admired. Holly’s frequent injection of French quotes in her daily speech influenced me to feel that this was a European work as well.

As can be expected, the character that stood out most in Breakfast at Tiffany’s for me was Holly Golightly, or Lulamae Barnes, as she is later found to actually be named. This only makes sense since the author and speaker spend so much time in the novel intrigued by her, following her very own life story. The portrayal of Holly Golightly is strangely specific, down to her chic black dress, pearl choker, cropped, bleached hair, and definitely unforgotten, her dark shades. Holly is the archetypical “interesting” character. Though not loved by everyone, she certainly has her fair share of – specifically – male admirers, and quite a number of lovers as well, not only from her word of mouth but from the speaker’s observances. If a character like Holly were to exist today, in our midst, you can bet that she would be the type of girl that most guys flocked over, but a girl that was devoid of female friends. Other girls would most probably be jealous or contemptuous of her.

Holly is definitely not my favorite character – and no, this is not because I would be one of those absurdly jealous ‘other girls,’ as aforementioned. I focus on her character because the author/speaker obviously wants his readers to. While reading about Holly’s lifestyle and actions, I couldn’t help but be scornful of her air-headed follies. Not only was she often deceptive, but she wasn’t even really a “nice,” proper person. When the narrator initially read his writing to her, she was unimpressed, and didn’t even bother to hide it. Like her own friend O.J. Berman called her, she was a “real phony.” I have to commend the author for trying to pass her off as a likeable character.

I am aware, however that this may all be because of how seriously screwed up Holly is. By the end of the story, she was a teenage runaway turned courtesan turned conspirator turned fugitive, who lived through the painful news of her brother’s death and a miscarriage. One thing that struck me most about her was how young she was through all of this. The events she lived seemed believable of a woman in her thirties at least, who had lived most of her life. But Holly was a mere eighteen years at the novel’s debut.

Capote truly makes me think about personal identity and how life’s events can shape a person by presenting a character such as Holly to me. A great lesson I take away from this piece is not to judge a book by its cover; Holly seemed fictitious initially, but the novel made her up to be quite a woman of substance.

-- Nakita

Holly Golightly: Am I a Manic Pixie Dream Girl yet?

In Holly Golightly, Truman Capote created a character that was enduring. It was the kind of character that inspired women from all over America in the 50s to pack up their bags and travel to New York. As readers we loved her in all her glamour, in her fifty-dollar tips to the powder room, in her refusal to be tied down by nothing and nobody. We sympathized with her and forgave all her flaws, because Truman Capote created a character that reminded us that as humans, we were all flawed in some way, and more often than not, we had to live with our flaws, with our issues, with our “mean reds”—so when she ran away in the end, we knew it was going to happen and we were okay with it.

However, personally, I struggled with her character. I struggled with her character because it was a trope. At the time, when Truman Capote first fashioned her out of the personalities and lives of his glamorous women friends, she wasn’t a trope; she certainly wasn’t a stereotype either, but as a reader who in the year 2013 has experienced the characters of Natalie Portman in Garden State, Kate Winslet in Almost Famous, every role that Zoey Dechanel has basically ever played, Midori Kobayashi in Norwegion Wood (by Haruki Murakami) and most of the female characters in John Greene novels, I feel resentful of Holly Golightly because I’m afraid that her Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) like tendencies may have set the stage for that stock character to cement its hold in the world of literature and film.

However, I only say MPDG like tendencies because Holly Golightly wasn’t actually an MPDG—when film critic Nathan Rabin coined that term after watching Elizabethtown in 2005, it was to describe the bubbly, almost-adorable-in-her-quirkiness woman that exists solely so that the sensitive brooding male protagonist can re-embrace life in all of its own imperfections. Obviously that was not Holly, because while Fred may have been obsessed with her, she didn’t change his life considering the fact that it never even occurred to him to write about her. But she certainly had those tendencies with her occasional shop-lifting, her love for Tiffany’s, her playing the guitar when she thought no one was looking, her nameless cat (because god forbid you gave a name to “an independent” stray cat) etc. The trauma of the MPDG like tendencies is what made me resist her in all her charm and charisma. Because ultimately I could not relate to her character and for me she could never be real. It is commendable that Capote made sure that she wasn’t just a superficial character, that she had some depth reflected in her commitment issues and in her relationship with her brother Fred, but why did she have those issues? How did she become that “wild thing” that she was? We know that she had a rough childhood but that was only until Doc Golightly took her in. We know that that time in her life was good because Holly loved Doc and had no particular complaints about her life with him—so how did those commitment issues come up? Capote did not develop her character. He kind of jut picked her up from East Jesus Nowhere and placed her in New York without ever explaining why she was the way she was. And then he combined that ambiguity with personality traits that were too cute to be real (she may not be one, but she obviously had to join the ranks of the MPDGs)—women like Holly Golightly don’t exist in the real world. So when Holly ran away in the end, I didn’t just hope that she was happy wherever she was, I wanted her to come back and deal with the case against her—because that’s what a real person would’ve done.  

--Smriti Bansal

The Character (Breakfast at Tiffany’s)

Holiday “Holly” Golightly has to be one of the most exceptional characters I have ever read about. Then again, I haven’t read many books. In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Capote writes about the protagonist recounting the memory of an eccentric neighbor who lived in his apartment building on the Upper East Side. Holly Golightly was not any ordinary girl, yet, from my reading of the story, she seemed to have fit in so nicely with the rest of the city.

Her character itself was a powerful one, always dictating the flow of the plot that surrounds her, and always dictating what the other characters should do. This is evident throughout the story as she only does what she wants to do regardless if it will bring her fame or fortune, as in the case of her story with OJ. I felt her character was so powerful that the protagonist kept getting swept away by her, long after she left. Perhaps it was love. Perhaps it was such a difference in their personalities.

But as powerful as Holly’s character was, due to the existence of other characters, Holly is the way she is. For example, it was Doc Golightly that found and raised Holly after she and her brother ran away from foster care, and perhaps, it was there that she began to feel a sense of responsibility not to the world around her, but a sense of responsibility to herself; Holly only seeks pleasure from life. It was probably also during that time that Holly began to have a taste for older men. Following her departure from the farm, she was scouted by OJ Berman and through him, her accent was gone and she picked up French.

I also especially loved the fact that these two characters existed because through them, Capote was able to tell the stories behind Holly that molded her into the way she is. Those characters also explained so many questions the reader had, such as “Who exactly is Holly? Where did she come from? Why are you so eccentric? What happened to you?”

In addition, each and every single character that starred in the book had some ultimate role revolving around Holly. For example,  I.Y. Yunioshi, was only mentioned in the beginning of the book. But I see his role as somewhat iconic in the fact that through him, the protagonist meets Holly, not once, but twice I would say. The first time is when Yunioshi decides that enough is enough and tells Holly to no longer ring his bell to let her in. Then, Holly decides to bother the narrator and through that, a friendship, and an unrequited love, blossoms. (Holly just enjoyed the company of the narrator in my opinion though she seemed to have a problem with boundaries).

The second time would actually be the first instance in the book when Joe Bell calls the narrator to the bar to tell him that there was a sign of Holly in, of all the places, Africa. This sign would turn out to be a head carving in her resemblance, as shown in photos taken by none other than I.Y. Yunioshi. I would not call this a meeting but more a rediscovery of sorts. It would be the second time, in chronological order, that Mr. Yunioshi introduces the Holly to the protagonist. Of course, this second time, the protagonist remembers Holly and decides to write the story of his time with her. This is the second meeting: a recount of the first.

Sachin A. Heerah

"Fred" and Sexuality

Since “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was published, the sexuality of our narrator/character “Fred” has been questioned by a number of critics and even just the general reading population. After doing a bit of research, I couldn’t locate any particular or concrete sources either verifying or denying Fred’s sexual preferences (besides various bloggers claiming Capote has “explicitly stated that Fred is gay” without providing any sort of sources), but the possibility left me thinking about the relationship between Fred and Holly- why hadn’t it, like many of the relationships Holly has shared with other characters, become sexual? Based on his behavior as both character and narrator, could Fred’s being gay prove plausible?

What struck me primarily about Fred as a character was that he, unlike plenty of the other characters in the story, never gave himself to Holly (or anyone else, for that matter) sexually; He never thought about it, and he never discusses dating anyone. As a matter of fact, the only time Fred ever mentions someone being very attractive is in his description of José Yabarra-Jaegar: “by the time we had I was charmed…his brown head and bullfighter’s figure had…a perfection…something nature had made just right” (45). Additionally, I found it noteworthy that the only time Holly’s flirtatious qualities are dropped is in his presence, and it is made clear to the reader that she doesn’t expect a sexual relationship from him, unlike her expectations for the other men with whom she interacts. However, none of this really dawned on me until a second reading.  The first time through, I just assumed that Fred was heterosexual (why would anyone think otherwise?) and was so concerned and interested in Holly because he was unashamedly in love with her. And for more than half of the text, I thought I was right, until Fred blatantly admits:  “For I was in love with her. Just as I’d once been in love with my mother’s elderly colored cook and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole family named McKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy, too” (72). At that point, I began to ponder the idea of Fred being gay- it struck me as so contrasted to the feelings I had been led to believe Fred felt for Holly. I was stunned and intrigued.

That being said, just because Fred isn’t attracted to Holly doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in women at all, and it would be offensive to think so. However, his behavior toward her (and lack of romantic/sexual desire, according to our narrator); his not mentioning any attraction toward women throughout the text; Holly’s strange behavior toward him that sets him apart from the other men in her life; and Fred’s only brief mentioning of attraction directed toward a man, I don’t believe that the idea should be immediately dismissed. Knowing Capote identified as homosexual, and that when asked, he “described the novel as…an emotional, or spiritual, autobiography, if not an actual literal one”,  it wouldn’t be far-fetched to discuss Fred’s own preferences and how that would change anything in the story. [1]

While I myself haven’t formulated a truly solid opinion concerning Fred’s sexuality even after all of this speculation, I actually appreciate the fact that it isn’t clearly stated in the text and is left questionable. It’s an interesting contrast to the rampant sexual nature of many of the other characters and the general stark honesty and openness concerning Holly and her own preferences. Fred’s inwardness is preferable to me personally because most people don’t really project that kind of information to others and rather choose to keep it to themselves, and Fred’s reality-grounded character in that sense is appealing to me.

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[1] Real, Jure. "Truman Capote." Magill's Survey of American Literature. Ed. Steven G. Kellman. Revised Edition ed. 1 Vol. Salem Press Inc, 2006. 397-406. Print.