Summary

The narrator reminisces about his first apartment in New York, a single room in a brownstone in the East Seventies. Though it was dark and "crowded with attic furniture", he remembers the apartment fondly, as it was his own space, containing everything he needed to "become the kind of writer [he] wanted to be".

The narrator reveals that his memory was triggered by a telephone call the previous Tuesday from Joe Bell, the proprietor of a bar located around the corner from the old brownstone. While the two men haven't seen each other in years, and while Joe doesn't give a reason for his sudden call, the narrator assumes that Joe has information about Holly Golightly, a woman who lived in the apartment beneath his and with whom he frequented Joe's bar. Despite a downpour of rain, the narrator takes a taxi to the bar, where he finds Joe alone on the premises.

After mixing him a "White Angel" (half vodka, half gin), Joe asks the narrator if he remembers a Japanese man named I.Y. Yunioshi. The narrator recalls that he was a magazine photographer who occupied the studio apartment on the top floor of the old brownstone and who, according to the gossip columns, had spent the last two years in Africa. Satisfied with his answer, Joe passes the narrator an envelope containing three photographs, all of an African man in traditional dress displaying an elaborate wood carving of a young woman's head, complete with short hair, large uptilted eyes, and a wide, full mouth. The narrator recognizes the sculpture as an exact image of Holly Golightly.

Joe relates the story of the wood carving to the narrator as Yunioshi told it to him the previous night. Traveling through Tococul, an obscure village in East Anglia on Christmas day, Yunioshi was impressed by a local man squatting in a doorway, carving monkeys on a walking stick. When asked to see more of his work, the African produced the sculpture of the head. Yunioshi, struck by the resemblance to his former neighbor, offered to buy the carving, but found the artist strangely reluctant to part with his work. Bartering salt and his watch, Yunioshi convinced the African to tell him the story behind the carving.

In broken English and improvised sign-language, the African revealed that the carving is a representation of a young white woman who, along with two white men, had rode into Tococul unexpectedly in the Spring of that year. The men were sick with fever and were forced to stay in the village for several weeks in an isolated hut while they recovered, while the woman developed an affection for the carver and slept with him on his mat. Then, as suddenly as she had arrived, the woman disappeared, riding off on her horse through the African brush.

Joe and the narrator speculate as to the truth of the African's story, and wonder about Holly's current whereabouts. The narrator surmises that the story is false, and that Holly is likely still in New York, either dead, in an asylum, or "married and quieted down." Joe disagrees, reasoning that he's been walking all over the city for the past ten to twelve years, and, given his fixation on Holly, he would have noticed her if she were around.

Joe having inadvertently revealed his affection for Holly, the two men share an awkward moment. The narrator returns the photos to Joe and rises to leave, but Joe grabs his wrist. He confesses that while he loved Holly, his feelings were not sexual: "[It] wasn't that I wanted to touch her." While, in his advancing age, he finds he has sexual thoughts "more and more", he insists that his love for Holly was that for "a stranger, a stranger who's a friend."

The narrator exits the bar to find that it has stopped raining. He walks around the neighborhood to the brownstone he used to live in, which, he discovers, has been "sleeked up", renovated with a new door and elegant shutters. Looking at the mailboxes, the narrator realizes that only one of his former neighbors, Madame Sapphia Spanella, is still a tenant, and recalls that he first became aware of Holly Golightly because of her mailbox.

Analysis

While Breakfast at Tiffany's is primarily the story of Holly Golightly, the novella's opening section places Holly at a conspicuous distance from the narrative action. The reader is told Holly's story after the fact, through the recollection of an unnamed narrator approximately ten years after he last saw her. This structural technique is called a "frame narrative": a story that encloses, or "frames" the central story, which then appears as a "tale within a tale". While the story of the narrator's meeting with Joe Bell is an explicit frame for Holly's tale, we notice this tale is also communicated to the narrator himself through a series of intermediary narratives: the African carver tells his story to Yunioshi, who relates it to Joe Bell, who conveys it to the narrator, who finally passes it along to the reader.

By introducing Holly in such an indirect manner, Capote calls our attention to Holly's essentially mysterious and enigmatic nature. Throughout the novella, Holly is characterized as an unknowable person: she operates under an alias, lies, and refuses to divulge the details of her life to her friends. The use of a frame narrative exaggerates Holly's mystery, turning her into a literal rumor that can be neither verified nor dismissed. Moreover, the interest of the narrator, Joe Bell, Yunioshi and the African in Holly's fate indicates the continuing power of her charisma. The African refuses to part with his carving, Yunioshi is willing to pay a seemingly unlimited amount of money and goods for it, and the narrator travels across the city in the rain at the mere suggestion of news of Holly. While Holly has faded into rumor, she maintains a potent hold on the imaginations of the men whose lives, however briefly, intersected with her own.

The opening section of Breakfast At Tiffany's introduces another central concern of Capote's writing: the ambiguity of sexual identity and orientation. Capote's novella was published in 1958, a time when homosexuality was a taboo subject that few writers addressed directly. Rather, artists often "coded" characters as gay or lesbian by implying they had an eccentric, or "inverted" sexual identity. While neither Joe Bell nor Holly are explicitly characterized as homosexuals, both are described in androgynous terms. The narrator lists Joe's interests as "ice hockey, Weimaraner dogs, Our Gal Sunday {a soap serial)...and Gilbert and Sullivan". Moreover, Joe is found in his bar arranging a bowl of fresh flowers "with matronly care" in a niche adorned with photos of hockey stars. This juxtaposition of the stereotypically masculine (hockey) with the stereotypically feminine (flowers, soap operas, musical theatre) suggests that Joe, like his interests, is similarly gender conflicted. In his conversation with the narrator, Joe, a sixty-six year old bachelor, insists he didn't "want to touch Holly", a confession that distinguishes his affection for her from the patently sexual infatuation of the majority of the men in the novel. Similarly, Holly is described as having hair "sleek and short as a young man's", and a "flat little bottom", stereotypically masculine characteristics that, along with her willingness to explore Africa on horseback, indicates Holly's rejection of mid-century gender roles, which, as the narrator suggests, would require her to be "married and quieted down."

At the time of the publication of Breakfast at Tiffany's, America was fraught with racial tension. In the wake of WWII and the dawn of the Korean War, Asian-American relations were particularly negative, and the increasing pressure for civil rights placed African-Americans under intense public scrutiny. It is notable that the opening section of Capote's novella features two important non-white characters: the photographer, Yunioshi, and the African carver, whose name we aren't told. Joe Bell, presumably white, refers to the carver as a "negro", an acceptable term for people of African descent in the 1950s, and to Yunioshi as a "Jap", a derogatory slur for Japanese people. The narrator's description of the sculpture as a "primitive carving" indicates the superior attitude of white America towards non-white cultures: the object is described as a "carving" and its maker as a "carver" (not, respectively, as "sculpture" and "artist"), and the adjective "primitive" exemplifies the common pejorative association of Africans with "savages" or cave-men. Despite the racist terms in which Yunioshi and the African are described, both characters are important in conveying information about Holly to the narrator, a centrality that foreshadows the eclectic and often progressive political atmosphere of the novella. The fact that Holly is rumored to have "shared the woodcarver's mat" (a detail Joe Bell is reluctant to believe) is particularly indicative of her liberal sexual and racial politics, explored more fully in the remainder of the novella.

With the exception of Joe Bell, all of the characters in the first section of Breakfast at Tiffany's are artists: the narrator is a writer, Yunioshi is a photographer, and the African is a sculptor. Even Madame Sapphia Spanella, the name the narrator recognizes on the mailbox, is a coloratura, a soprano opera singer. Holly, absent in person, is present in the carving: she is both the inspiration for, and the subject of, a work of art. A recurring concern of the novella is the role of art as a way to preserve, interpret, and even transform our personal experiences. It is the sculpture of Holly, as documented by the photograph, that inspires the narrator to write Holly's story and, thus, to explore his relationship to her and to himself.

Summary

The narrator relates that he had been living in the brownstone for about a week when he noticed an unusual card on one of the mailboxes: "Miss Holiday Golightly; Traveling." On a subsequent night at a late hour, he wakes to hear Yunioshi arguing with a young woman who has rung his doorbell to enter the building, having lost her own key. She finally placates Yunioshi by promising that she'll let him "take those pictures we mentioned." The narrator peeks into the stairwell and finally sees Holly: a thin, well-groomed 18-year old woman with short, multicolored hair and clean, healthy appearance. Behind her, nuzzling her neck, is a short, plump older man whom Holly thanks for seeing her home and then shuts out of her apartment. He argues with her through the door, upset that she has called him "Harry" when his name is Sid Arbuck, and complains that he picked up the check for her and her five friends. Holly "advises" Sid that the next time a girl asks him for "powder-room change", he should give her more than twenty cents, and he finally leaves.

Holly stops ringing Yunioshi's bell and starts ringing the narrator's at late hours whenever she has lost her key, which is often. Apart from these exchanges, the narrator and Holly don't speak. However, the narrator sees her on the town, once at a restaurant table surrounded by older men, and a second time dancing outside a saloon with a group of army officers. On his way home from spotting Holly at the restaurant, the narrator admires an elaborate and expensive birdcage in the window of an antique store.

In the absence of direct contact, the narrator spends the summer inspecting Holly's trash, finding that she reads astrological charts, smokes "an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes", dyes her hair, and receives love letters "by the bale". Watching her through his apartment window, he discovers that she has an orange tabby cat and plays the guitar, including several obscure country songs that suggest she was not from a city, but "pineywoods or prairie".

One night in September, the narrator is relaxing with a bourbon and a novel when he has the unpleasant feeling of being watched. He finds Holly standing on his fire escape watching him through the window. She is wearing only a flannel robe. He lets her into his apartment, and she explains that she has "the most terrifying man downstairs", who, in his drunkenness, has bitten her shoulder. Sitting down on a chair, Holly tells the narrator that he looks like her brother Fred, a "sweet and vague and terribly slow" boy who is now in the army, and the narrator agrees to let her call him by that name. The narrator reveals that he's a writer, and she reveals that she "trained" herself to like older men. When the narrator admits that he has yet to publish his writing, Holly tells him that she has connections that could help him.

The narrator fixes Holly a drink, offers her an apple, and he reads her his latest short story. She appears bored throughout the reading, and, upon its conclusion, admits that "stories about dykes bore the bejesus out of me". The narrator is too discouraged to explain to Holly that the story was not about lesbians. Holly confesses that she is looking for a lesbian roommate, as they "love to do all the work", and that she is "a bit of a dyke" herself; "everyone is: a bit."

Upon discovering that it is 4:30, Holly becomes anxious. She tells the narrator that on Thursdays, she has to catch the 8:45 train to make her weekly visit to Sing Sing prison on time. Holly confesses that she is visiting Sally Tomato, a notorious gangster who used to frequent Joe Bell's bar before he was imprisoned. Sally was never Holly's lover, but he admired her from a distance and arranged for her visits to Sing Sing through his lawyer, Mr. O'Shaughnessy, who offered her $100 a week for the service. Holly is pleased with the arrangement, despite the fact that she has to pretend to be Sally's niece and convey coded messages ("weather reports") between the gangster and his lawyer.

The narrator expresses concern about the arrangement, but Holly tells him not to worry; she's taken care of herself "a long time." She joins the narrator in bed and tells him to go to sleep, but he stays awake, aware of her presence beside him. Holly starts crying. When the narrator asks her why, she bolts out of his window, saying "I hate snoops."

Analysis

The second section of Breakfast At Tiffany's exits the frame narrative of the introduction and moves into the central story of the narrator's relationship with Holly. Capote develops several of Holly's unique characteristics, namely, her ambiguous identity, her unconventional sexual politics, and her artifice. To a lesser extent, the narrator is also elaborated as a character. Fascinated by Holly, he gathers details about her through anonymous surveillance: he secretly watches Holly out on the town and on her fire escape, and he investigates her trash. While Holly's is the narrator's story to tell, he is outside it, an observer or voyeur looking in on Holly's life. The narrator is thus established as a passive person, a writer who learns by observing others, rather than experiencing life directly. Moreover, he remains nameless (except to Holly, who calls him by her brother's name, Fred). Nameless, without qualities except those of the observer, the narrator of Breakfast at Tiffany's is the epitome of the objective, "all-seeing eye" of third-person realist fiction. The narrator's struggle to maintain his writer's "objectivity" in the face of his increasing personal investment in others is crucial to the novella, and to Capote's work in general.

Who is Holly Golightly? This question, which recurs throughout the novella, structures the second section. The narrator is intrigued by the card on Holly's mailbox, which reads: "Holiday Golightly: Traveling." The unusual name suggests Holly's unconventional nature. A "holiday" is a time of rest from the regular work-day, thus suggesting Holly's rejection of the Protestant work ethic that was prized highly in early 20th century capitalist America; "Golightly" is a compound of "go" and "lightly", which encapsulates her tendency to change locations, lifestyles and identities without hesitation or guilt. The word "traveling", which replaces the occupation title on the standard mid-century calling card, underscores Holly's flightiness, her temporary presence in any single location or relationship. Moreover, it alludes to the country song the narrator observes Holly singing on her balcony, which contains the line: "Don't wanna sleep, Don't wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky". In the song, travel is presented as an alternative to death; Holly's calling card suggests that she "travels" as a way of escaping the deathlike banality of conventional existence.

However, the narrator's observations of Holly reveal that many of her distinctive characteristics are the product of conscious self-fashioning. In her trash, the narrator finds hair dye, indicating that her unique multicolored hair is "self-induced." The remains of "melba toast and cottage cheese" suggest that her fashionably thin figure is the product of dieting. And viewing Holly on her balcony, the narrator observes that, in addition to popular show tunes, Holly plays obscure country songs on her guitar. He notes that these are the songs that "seemed to gratify her the most", suggesting an unexpected rural background for the seemingly urban socialite. These observations imply that Holly guards her identity because, in part, it is a construction, an artificial creation that masks her more pathetic true story.

The narrator's conversation with Holly confirms his observations that she earns her living through unconventional means. She lives off the money her male admirers give her, not exclusively for sexual activity, but for her charming company in the bars and restaurants of New York. This, along with her short hair, candid discussion of sex and admission that she is "a bit of a dyke", indicates Holly's progressive sexual politics and positions her outside the strict definition of femininity that mid-century American women were expected to fulfill.

Holly's conversation with the narrator introduces another of the novella's key themes: the commodification of art and experience. Holly asks the narrator if he is a "real writer", to which he answers: "it depends on what you mean by real." Her response, that a real writer is one whose writing makes him money, along with her mention of Benny Shacklett, a writer of radio programs, indicates the difference between Holly and the narrator's definitions of art. Holly, a fictional person of her own making, is a woman who sells her time, affections, and even her body for money. She views herself as a commodity, as something that can and should be bought and sold. She is art as a commodity, and she extends this reasoning to the narrator's writing. The narrator resents her implication that the value of art is limited only to its success on the commercial market.

Moreover, Holly's visit to the narrator's apartment demonstrates the quick bond between the two characters, and foreshadows the friendship to come. Her affectionate description of her brother Fred, followed by her decision to call the narrator by this name, indicates that the narrator, like Fred, is someone with whom she feels comfortable and safe. The narrator's association with Fred becomes key to his dynamic with Holly throughout the novella.

Summary

The following Friday, the narrator finds an apology note from Holly Golightly on his doorstep, explaining that she won't bother him again. The following Thursday, Holly leaves an invitation to stop by her apartment for a drink that night in his mailbox. He is relieved, as he has been consumed by thoughts of her all week.

When the narrator arrives at Holly's apartment, which is oddly void of furniture and has a makeshift appearance, he is greeted by O.J. Berman, a Hollywood agent. While Holly is in the shower, Berman explains to the narrator that Holly is a "phony", and tells him the story of how he met her. At fifteen, she had been living with a horse jockey in Santa Anita. Berman spotted her potential as an actress; he got her work as an extra in films and gave her French lessons to smooth out her "hillbilly" accent. But when Berman secured her an audition for a large part in a film called The Story of Dr. Wassell, she fled to New York the day before the audition, telephoning Berman only to tell him that she didn't want the part. Before Holly joins them in the living room, Berman tells the narrator that Holly is planning to marry a man named Rusty Trawler.

Within the space of fifteen minutes, Holly's apartment fills up with strange men, many of them much older than Holly. The narrator observes that the guests do not seem to know each other, and that Holly has "distributed her invitations while zig-zagging through various bars." The narrator amuses himself by browsing Holly's bookshelf, which contains only volumes about horses and baseball. He notices Rusty Trawler, a short, plump man with a babyish appearance, to whom Holly pays particular attention. Inside a book titled The Baseball Guide, the narrator finds several newspaper clippings about Rusty, which identify him as an orphaned millionaire heir who gained notoriety at the turn of the century when his godfather and custodian was arrested on charges of sodomy. The clippings further describe Rusty's adulthood, which was consumed by three messy marriages and divorces. Included in the clippings are tabloid articles that document Rusty's relationship with Holly.

Holly approaches the narrator and he asks her about her unusual selection of books. She reveals that it's part of her "research": "If a man doesn't like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn't like either of them, well, I'm in trouble...he don't like girls." She tells the narrator about why she decided against being an actress: actresses need to abandon their egos. She talks about her cat, whom she refuses to name because they don't "belong to each other", and describes how she enjoys visiting Tiffany's when she has the "mean reds", a state of depression the narrator likens to angst.

Rusty Trawler brings the narrator a drink, and Rusty and Holly bicker affectionately when he complains that he is hungry. When the narrator comments that Rusty seems to be clinging to childhood, Holly explains that he "feels safer in diapers than he would in a skirt...which is really the choice." She tells the narrator that she advised Rusty to realize his homosexuality, but that he tried to stab her with a butter knife at the mere suggestion.

Holly suggests that the narrator resume a conversation with O.J. Berman, who has contacts that could help him with his writing career. She is interrupted by Mag Wildwood's entrance. Mag is a tall, eccentrically dressed woman with a pronounced stutter. She explains to Holly that she came uninvited after working with Yunioshi, for whom she was modeling in a magazine shoot. Mag flirts with Berman, and while he escorts her to the restroom, Holly suggests to the guests that Mag has venereal disease.

When Mag returns, she is upset to find the guests suddenly cold and hostile. She insults Holly and tries to start a fight with an older male guest. The party, Holly included, disperses toward the front door of the apartment. Preparing to leave, Holly asks the narrator to see Mag home in a taxi. As Mag rises, she passes out. The narrator checks her pulse and breathing, props a pillow under her head, and leaves Mag sleeping on Holly's living room floor.

On Friday afternoon, the narrator runs into Holly on the stairs of the brownstone, where she chastises him for leaving Mag on her apartment floor. The narrator is confused by Holly's sudden sympathy for Mag. Over the weekend, his confusion is deepened when a well-dressed, attractive Latin man comes to his door, looking for Mag Wildwood. Later, he sees the same man bringing suitcases into the brownstone.

On Sunday, the narrator sees Holly and Mag sunbathing on the fire escape, drying their freshly washed hair. He overhears them discussing Mag's relationship with the Latin man, whose name is Jose Yberra-Jaegar. Mag tells Holly that she is lucky that Rusty is American, and their conversation turns to the topic of national pride. While Mag is happy to be American and supports her countries efforts in the war, Holly is indifferent, and tells Mag that she plans on leaving as soon as the war is over.

Holly discusses her brother Fred, a soldier, and calls him stupid. Mag believes she is talking about the narrator, whom Holly also calls Fred, and admits that he looks stupid. Holly corrects Mag's mistake, but concedes that the narrator does look stupid: "anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid."

Mag expresses concern over moving to Brazil once she and Jose marry. She reveals that while he aspires to be President of Brazil, she wishes for him to give up politics so that they can stay in America. Mag asks Holly if she and Jose appear to be madly in love to which Holly responds that it depends on his behavior in bed. Mag is embarrassed, but then confesses that Jose laughs during sex. Holly approves of this light-hearted habit: "most of them, they're all pant and puff."

Holly pressures Mag for more details about Jose's sexual habits, but Mag claims she doesn't remember: "they go out of my head like a dream". She claims that's the "normal attitude." Holly scoffs: "It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural." She advises Mag to leave the lights on during sex, to which Mag responds that she is a "very conventional person". Mag calls Holly "a cold plate of macaroni", and Holly responds that while Mag has a warm heart, she is insubstantial. The two women bicker, both admitting that Holly would be better off in Brazil than Mag.

Analysis

The narrator's conversation with O.J. Berman expands the focus on Holly's artifice established in the previous section. Berman calls her a "phony", but "a real phony...[she] believes all this crap she believes." Holly's contrived, or "fake" identity and lifestyle is real because it permeates her life: for Holly, nothing is more natural than assuming different roles and personas. Berman's account of Holly's earlier lives as a girlfriend to a horse jockey and an aspiring Hollywood actress enhance the reader's understanding of Holly's chameleon nature. In particular, Berman's description of Holly's original accent as "hillbilly or an Okie" confirms the narrator's suspicion of her rural background while leaving the exact nature of her origin mysterious. The reader learns that even Holly's distinctive speech, peppered with French phrases and American slang, is contrived, the result of French lessons designed to "smooth out" her country accent.

At Holly's party, the fluidity of human sexuality is again put under scrutiny. In the opening sections of the novella, the narrator's sexual orientation is unclear; at Holly's party, it is suggested he is a homosexual. Browsing Holly's bookshelf and finding only volumes about horses and baseball, he admits that he was only "pretending an interest" in both subjects in order to gain a vantage point from which to observe Holly's friends. When he asks Holly why she only collects books on these topics, she responds: "If a man doesn't like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn't like either of them, well, I'm in trouble anyway: he don't like girls." The narrator does not correct her, implying that he agrees with Holly's observation.

While critics of the novella have been eager to cast the narrator as gay, we must remember that sexuality in Breakfast At Tiffany's is never presented in reductive, straight/gay terms. Holly's discussion of Rusty Trawler in this section exemplifies the novella's exploration of sexual identity as being a fluid process that evades labels. When the narrator comments on Rusty's infantile relationship to Holly, she responds that Rusty simply "feels safer in diapers than he would in a skirt...[he] tried to stab me with a butter knife because I told him to...settle down and play house with a nice fatherly truck driver." Holly thus suggests not only that her Rusty's attraction to her is that of a child to a parent, but that his infantile proclivities are a defense against recognizing his homosexual nature. The impossibility of defining Rusty as either "straight" or "gay" indicates the novella's treatment of human sexuality as a complex and often indefinable phenomenon.

The third section also introduces three of the novella's main recurring motifs: Tiffany's, the "mean reds", and Holly's nameless cat. All three symbolize different facets of Holly's sense of homelessness and her conviction that she does not belong in the world. Holly describes Tiffany's as her antidote to a state of depression she calls the "mean reds" - not "the blues", but a profound fear of the unknown. Tiffany's, in contrast, is a place where "nothing very bad could happen to you": Holly feels at home in the store. Her cat, a wild animal she picked up by the river, is a projection of Holly's sense of not belonging. She refuses to name the pet, stating that she and the cat, "don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I." She tells the narrator that once she finds a place that made her feel like Tiffany's, she would, "buy some furniture and give the cat a name." A sense of belonging, as symbolized by Tiffany's, is required for Holly to escape the "mean reds" and acquire a stable identity and lifestyle.

The fourth section of Breakfast at Tiffany's is short, consisting mainly of the narrator's observations of Holly and Mag Wildwood conversing on the fire escape. It establishes the fickle relationship between the two women, who had fought bitterly only a few days earlier. Through the dialogue between Holly and Mag, a "very conventional person", the reader's sense of Holly's unorthodox nature is heightened. Mag's embarrassment at discussing sex, her confessed sexual passivity (she prefers to leave the lights off during sex), and blind patriotism stand in sharp contrast to Holly's candor, sexual assertiveness (she states boldly that "men are beautiful"), and indifference toward her home country, a dangerous sentiment during the heightened patriotism of war time America. Holly's statement that she would "rather be natural" than normal indicates another recurring concern of the novel: that definitions of what is "normal" are arbitrary, and serve to control and restrain the natural freedom of the human spirit. Moreover, Holly's interest in Jose's sexual habits, as well as her statement that she would be better off in Brazil than Mag, indicate Holly's preoccupation with Jose and foreshadow the affair that occupies the novella's later sections.

Holly and Mag's brief discussion of the narrator, whom Mag confuses with Holly's brother Fred, confirms the novella's earlier characterization of the narrator as a outsider who observes, rather than participates in, his own life. Holly's claims that he "wants awfully to be on the inside staring out" suggests that she believes that the narrator's sense of exclusion is not his own choice and is, in fact, a source of despair for him. The narrator's position as unseen voyeur of Holly and Mag's conversation, literally "pressed up against the glass" of his fire escape window, ironically confirms Holly's statement.

Summary

On Monday, the narrator sees that the card on Holly's mailbox has been altered to include Mag Wildwood's name. He is interested in this development, but is then distracted by a letter in his own mailbox from a small university review. It informs him that the editors have agreed to publish his story in an upcoming issue. While the publication would not pay, the narrator is so excited that he forgets Holly's previous admonishment and knocks on her apartment door, eager to share the good news.

Holly comes to the door, clearly having been woken up. The narrator hands her the letter, and she takes a long time to read it. After offering her congratulations, Holly invites the narrator into her apartment and tells him she will take him out to lunch to celebrate. Waiting in Holly's bedroom, the narrator sees that it has the same "camping-out atmosphere" of the rest of the apartment, with no real furniture beyond the rather flashy bed.

Through the bathroom door, Holly tells the narrator about her decision to take Mag on as a roommate. While Mag isn't a lesbian, Holly explains, she is a "perfect fool" who had agreed to take on the lease and the burden of housework. Mag's modeling career means that she is out of the apartment most of the time. Moreover, Mag is engaged, which means that she and Holly will not be in direct competition for men. Holly explains that while Jose is a nice guy, there is a difference in height: "a foot, her favor".

Immaculately dressed and groomed, Holly treats the narrator to Manhattans at Joe Bell's bar. Hearing the good news of the narrator's story, Joe Bell offers them both champagne cocktails on the house. Holly and the narrator spend the rest of the day watching a parade on Fifth Avenue, eating lunch in the cafeteria park, and relaxing on the park's wooden boathouse porch. Holly asks about the narrator's childhood, and then relates the details of her own. The narrator notices that her own story, while pleasant, is "elusive, nameless, placeless, an impressionistic recital." He suspects that she isn't telling the truth, since he has heard that Holly had run away from home.

The narrator asks Holly if she had really run away from home at the young age of fourteen, and she admits that it is true; her previous story was a lie, made up because she didn't want to compete with the narrator's own tragic tale. Holly remembers that she wants to send her brother some peanut butter, and the two spend the afternoon haggling with grocers for jars of the wartime scarcity.

By the time Holly and the narrator have found six jars of peanut butter, it is dark, and the narrator takes Holly to the antique shop to point out the palatial bird cage he has been admiring. Holly admires it, but points out that "still, it's a cage." Spotting a Woolworth's, Holly drags him in, convincing him to steal something. The narrator feels watched, but, while the saleslady is occupied, he and Holly slip Halloween masks over their faces and exit the store without paying. He feels exhilarated, and the pair run a few blocks for dramatic effect. The narrator asks Holly if she had ever stolen before, and she admits that she used to, and still steals from time to time for practice. Happy, the two wear their stolen masks all the way home.

Analysis

Section 5, which covers the narrator's conversation with Holly as they are preparing to celebrate the first publication of his writing, mainly serves to enhance the reader's understanding of Holly's resourceful and opportunistic nature. The narrator learns that, despite the seemingly friendly relationship between Holly and Mag, Holly has only taken Mag on as a roommate because she thinks her a "perfect fool" who would be willing to take on the lease and do Holly's share of laundry. As she does with the wealthy men in her life, Holly takes advantage of Mag, and expresses no remorse over her behavior. That the narrator considers Holly to be amoral is indicated by his assessment of her makeshift apartment, strewn with packed crates he compares to "the belongings of a criminal who feels the law not far behind."

The following section contains one of most memorable episodes in Breakfast At Tiffany's: Holly and the narrator's idle, adventurous day in New York City. The section deeply explores one of the novella's major themes: deception. Sharing an intimate conversation on Central Park's boathouse porch, the narrator and Holly exchange stories of their early childhoods. When Holly tells a vague, impressionistic story of a happy childhood filled with "swimming and summer, Christmas trees, pretty cousins and parties", the narrator realizes that she is lying. Holly admits the lie, but does not seem embarrassed or remorseful. Holly's constant fictionalizing of her own history and identity, as well as her willingness to lie to her friend, suggests her status as a "true phony": a person who lacks a true sense of self, and consequently, a sense of moral obligation to others. Also notable in this episode is the reader's lack of information about the narrator's childhood, which Holly relates was a "tragedy". The narrator tells his story to Holly, but it is not recorded in the narrative. The withholding of the narrator's story exemplifies the dynamic of the novella in which the narrator remains more remote from the reader than Holly, whose story he is telling.

Both the narrator and the reader's understanding of Holly as a "phony" is tempered, however, by her frequent mention of her brother Fred, with whom she imagines settling down with in Mexico. The details about Fred - he is tall, good with horses, and loves peanut butter - are among the few true details of Holly's life she discusses with others. Her attachment to and honesty about Fred suggests that Holly is not inherently deceptive; but rather her lies are ways to keep herself invulnerable in the face of the "mean reds": her shattering sense of not belonging to other people. Holly's efforts in this section to collect jars of peanut butter for Fred despite its scarcity casts a sympathetic light on Holly and implies that she might yet be redeemed.

The theme of deception in section 6 culminates with Holly and the narrator's theft of Halloween masks from the discount store Woolworth's. Holly admits to the narrator that she once stole out of necessity, but now steals only for the fun of the deception itself. Her nonchalant attitude towards theft again positions Holly outside the moral standards of conventional society. Holly's choice of masks - a classic symbol of deception and artifice - as objects of the theft they finalize her status as a "phony", a person who would rather perform a role than living an authentic life. As the narrator flees from Woolworth's in his stolen mask, he feels a sense of exhilaration as he steps into Holly's shoes, abandoning his careful personality to briefly experience life as she does.

Section 6 is also where the novella's motif of the birdcage is explored in depth. As the narrator and Holly wander through Central Park, they avoid the zoo, as Holly can't "bear to see anything in a cage." Later, when the narrator shows her the birdcage he admired in an antique store window, Holly points out that "still, it's a cage." Pathologically anxious about being restrained by relationships or even a stable lifestyle, convinced that she belongs to no one and nothing, Holly's fear of the cage represents her fear of being imprisoned by others. That Holly's dislike of cages is introduced in Section 6, which explores Holly's deceptive nature, is important. By aligning examples of deception with images of imprisonment, Capote suggests that Holly's "phoniness" is a defense against making herself vulnerable to others, and hence, to the "cage" of an authentic relationship.

Summary

The narrator finds a full-time job, and sees less of Holly. While they are sometimes able to share an early-morning coffee on his return from work, Holly is frequently out, sometimes with Rusty Trawler and often with Rusty, Mag and Jose. The narrator notes that among such company, the reserved and respectable Jose looks out of place.

One afternoon while waiting for a bus, the narrator notices Holly entering the public library. Confused by this seemingly uncharacteristic interest, the narrator follows her in and observes Holly secretly from a nearby reading table. As he watches her take notes, the narrator is reminded of a classmate he had while in school, Mildred Grossman. While Mildred was a humorless, practical introvert, and Holly a lighthearted, irrational extrovert, the narrator considers them "Siamese twins": while most personalities are malleable and ever-shifting, Mildred and Holly "had been given their character too soon", and, as a result, would never change. Like caricatures, both Mildred and Holly were disproportionate embodiments of distinct "types": Mildred the realist, and Holly the romantic. After Holly leaves, the narrator walks over to her reading table and sees that she had been consulting travel and political books about Brazil.

On Christmas Eve, the narrator attends a party given by Holly and Mag. He helps them trim their enormous tree with baubles, tinsel, and stolen balloons. Holly tells the narrator that there is a present for him in the bedroom; on her bed, he finds the birdcage he had admired, decorated with a red ribbon. He is surprised by the amount of money she has spent on it - three hundred and fifty dollars - and she shrugs, explaining that it just took "a few extra trips to the powder-room." Holly makes him promise that he'll "never put a living thing" in the cage, and he agrees. The narrator hands Holly her present, a St. Christopher's medal from Tiffany's.

The narrator, speaking in the present, informs the reader that while Holly has almost certainly lost the medal, he still owns the birdcage, and has traveled with it across the U.S., North Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. He recalls that the birdcage was at the center of a big argument he and Holly had in the February of the same year.

After the Christmas party, Holly, Rusty, Mag, and Jose take a winter trip to Key West. After she returns, newly tanned and blonde, Holly explains to the narrator that, soon after the group arrived, Rusty had gotten into an altercation with a group of sailors and was seriously injured, while Mag had to be hospitalized for first-degree sunburn. Jose and Holly had left Rusty and Mag in the hospital and went alone to Havana, where Holly became taken with their half-black, half-Chinese guide until it was revealed he was a star of a "blue movie" (pornography). When Jose and Holly returned to Key West, Mag and Rusty accused the pair of having slept together while in Havana, which caused particular tension between Holly and Mag.

Holly tells the narrator that she convinced Mag that she hadn't slept with Jose by confessing that she was "a dyke". Mag had believed her, and, to avoid sharing the same bed as a lesbian, was now sleeping on an army cot into the living room of Holly's apartment. The narrator gives Holly a backrub while she tells him that she passed along his short story, published in the university review, to O.J. Berman. She says that while Berman had been impressed with his writing, he thought the narrator was on the wrong track. "Negroes and children: who cares?"

The narrator dismisses Berman's criticism, but Holly admits that she thinks that the narrator's story "doesn't mean anything." She claims that Wuthering Heights was more meaningful. As the narrator and Holly argue, he realizes that she was talking about the movie version of Bronte's novel. Aware of his condescending attitude, Holly claims that if the narrator is to claim superiority, he should offer proof. When the narrator claims that he doesn't compare himself to Holly or Berman because they "want different things", Holly chides him for his lack of commercial ambition. "You'd better make money," she warns.

The narrator apologizes, but Holly continues to goad him. Finally, he points out the degrading way in which she earns her money, claiming that "Rusty Trawler is too hard a way of earning it." Holly tells the narrator to leave her apartment.

Analysis

The seventh section of "Breakfast At Tiffany's" extends the characterization of the narrator as an outside observer explored in the previous sections. The narrator spies on Holly, this time as she studies in the public library. Throughout the novella, the narrator vacillates between two distinct impulses towards Holly: friendship and voyeurism. In section 7, he explains that he finds a full-time job, seeing less of Holly; consequently, he finds himself again in the position of passive observer of her life.

Through the narrator's observations, the reader learns more about Holly's deceptive tendencies. After Holly leaves the library, the narrator discovers that she has been consulting travel and political guides about Brazil, the country Mag is supposedly moving to after marrying the Brazilian politician Jose. Holly's interest in these topics indicates not only her own interest in Jose, and thus her intended betrayal of Mag, but her ability to transform her basic attitude and identity as circumstance dictates. Holly was once credible as a jockey's girlfriend, a Hollywood wannabe, and now, a New York socialite. Her visit to the library indicates that she plans to transform yet again, this time into the cultured companion of a Brazilian head of state.

As the narrator observes Holly in the library, he is reminded of another girl he once knew: the practical, introverted Mildred Grossman. He conveys that the two women were opposites: Mildred a "top-heavy realist" and Holly a "lopsided romantic". Through his comparison, the narrator reveals his account of human personality. While he believes that most people are malleable, their nature fluid and ever shifting, both Mildred and Holly were unchanging, their distinct personalities formed early and thus becoming unalterable. This is a provocative observation when we consider that Holly's identity is pathologically unstable and almost completely fraudulent. By suggesting that Holly's basic character was complete and unchanging, the narrator illuminates Berman's claim that Holly is a "real phony". Holly's fraudulence and instability is perhaps not a cover, but her true nature; her "phoniness" is a very real, essential part of her basic character.

Holly's account of her group trip to Key West further enhances our understanding of the fraudulent relationship between Holly and Mag. After Holly and Jose leave Mag and Rusty in the Key West hospital to travel alone to Cuba, Holly responds to Mag's accusations by lying, telling Mag that she was a lesbian. This lie is intended partly to defend Holly against Mag's wrath, and partly for the joy of the lie itself. That Holly responds to the narrator's shock at this deception with such flippancy - "I'm always top banana in the shock department...darling, rub some oil on my back" - indicates her lack of guilt over both the affair and her betrayal of Mag.

The argument between Holly and the narrator returns the novella to its earlier examination of the definition of art. Holly and Berman, both of whom recognize the narrator's talent, urge him to abandon his descriptive prose in favor of a style that will earn him money. The narrator, feeling intellectually and aesthetically superior to both Holly and Berman, feels that such a move would compromise the integrity of his art. At the crux of this argument are two competing definitions of art: art as a commodity (Holly and Berman), and art as a critique of society that is distinct from mass culture (the narrator). From Holly's description of the narrator's story ("Negros and children"; "description") the reader can assume that the narrator's writing, like Capote's, is what critics now categorize as "social realism": descriptive, objective prose that explores the social and psychological realities of marginalized subjects. While such writing was critically important, it was not often - with the exception of Capote - commercially successful. The narrator's disgust at Holly's plea for him to "make money" is thus an expression of his larger dilemma as an artist whose position in mass-consumer society is precarious. Holly, a commodity herself, represents the pressure of commercial society upon artists to abandon their ideological and aesthetic ideals in favor of economic profit.

Summary

After his argument with Holly, the narrator places the birdcage in front of her apartment door. However, the next day he sees it on the sidewalk and brings it back to his apartment. Nevertheless, he maintains his grudge against Holly, not speaking to her when they pass each other in the brownstone or at Joe Bell's. However, when Sapphia Spanella, another tenant, brings a petition against Holly to have her evicted, the narrator refuses to sign, and the petition fails.

Later that spring, the narrator notices a suspicious man looking at Holly's mailbox. He is in his late-fifties and shabbily dressed. The narrator sees the man throughout the day, and realizes that he is following him. When the man sits down beside him in a restaurant, the narrator asks him what he wants, and the man tells him he is looking for a friend. The man shows the narrator a photo of himself and several children standing on a weathered porch. He points out that one of the children is Holly, and that another is her brother Fred. The man tells the narrator that he is a horse doctor from Texas named Doc Golightly, and that Holly's real name is Lulamae Barnes. They were married when Holly was thirteen. Doc was informed of his wife's whereabouts by Fred, and intends to convince Holly to return to him and the children he is raising from his first marriage.

Doc explains that he first encountered Holly and Fred when they were attempting to steal milk and turkey eggs from his farm. They had run away from the family they had been placed with when their parents died of tuberculosis. Doc took pity on the children and raised them as his own. Impressed by Holly's intelligence and charm, he eventually proposed to her. While she was well fed and did little housework, preferring to "comb her hair and send away for all the magazines," Holly was restless and eventually ran away.

Doc asks the narrator to let Holly know that he is here, and the narrator agrees. The two men return to the brownstone, where Doc waits at the bottom of the stairs while the narrator knocks on Holly's door. Holly assumes that he has come to make up after their fight, and asks him to return the next day, but when he calls her "Lulamae", she realizes that he has heard about her true identity. Thinking that it is her brother who is visiting, she calls down the hall for Fred. When she sees Doc, they laugh and embrace happily while Madame Spanella looks on with disapproval.

The next morning, Holly and the narrator have a conversation at Joe Bell's bar. She explains that she doesn't need to divorce Doc since she was only fourteen when she married, and thus, the marriage wasn't legal. She confesses that while she never intended to return to Texas with Doc, she slept with him the night before, since he gave her confidence as a child, and "anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot." She explains that she took him to the bus station that morning, and, as they were saying goodbye, she realized that was still Lulamae, "stealing turkey eggs and running through a brier patch."

"Never love a wild thing," Holly tells Joe. She explains that Doc was always nurturing wild animals, and that the more love he gave them, the stronger they became. Drunkenly, Holly states that "if you let yourself love a wild thing...[you'll] end up looking at the sky." Realizing that her husband must be back in Texas already, Holly invites the narrator to join her in a toast to Doc.

Analysis

The narrator's attachment to Holly is revealed in Section 8 through his ambivalent behavior. While he claims to desire Holly out of his life, he rescues the birdcage she gave him from the sidewalk curb, and refuses to sign a petition that would have her evicted. He is willing to act like he is angry, but unwilling to do anything that would sever his ties with Holly. Rather than true anger, the narrator appears to be performing anger as a way of working through his conflicted feelings toward her.

The appearance of Doc Golightly in this section re-establishes the ties between the narrator and Holly, not merely because the narrator acts as a liaison for Doc and Holly but because it reveals to the narrator the secret of Holly's early life, thereby making her vulnerable to the narrator. Not only does the narrator learn of the poverty and abuse of Holly's childhood, which explains her perpetual sense of homelessness, but he also learns her real name - Lulamae Barnes - which no one else seems to know. Holly's true story is exposed to the narrator, and thus she can't afford to maintain a grudge. Moreover, knowing Holly's true identity gives the narrator an upper hand over her and triggers his protective instinct toward his friend.

It is interesting that Holly's real name - Lulamae - is quite similar to Capote's own mother's name, Lillie Mae. Like Holly, Capote's mother changed her name to a more sophisticated sounding one - Nina - when she moved from the rural south to New York City. Lulamae, a compound of the names "Lula" and "Mae", alludes to springtime; it is interesting that Holly replaced it with a name that refers to a winter plant. The opposing meanings of the two names encapsulates the severity with which Holly rejects her roots, constructing a new identity that is the complete opposite of the one she was born with.

However, Holly's conversation with the narrator in Joe's bar the morning following Doc's visit indicates she has not been affected by the return of her secret past. She admits to having slept with her husband again, not out of love, but because she felt she still "owed" him for having rescued her and her brother. As she does with the men she entertains in New York, Holly sells her body to Doc as a kind of payment for his kindness, and does so with nonchalance. Doc was not angry with Holly and still hoped for her return again, which indicates her power over the men in her life, doubly illustrated by the narrator's renewed devotion.

Holly's drunken monologue in Joe's bar is one of the novella's famous passages. It gives the reader further insight into the initial attraction between Doc and the young Holly. She explains that Doc was "always hauling home wild things...a hawk with a hurt wing...a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg." He loved to nurture and nurse these animals, despite the fact they only abandoned him once they were back to health. "Never love a wild thing," Holly warns Joe, "[you'll] end up looking at the sky." Holly, a starving and homeless child when Doc adopted her, is thus aligned with the wild animals he also loved. Considering herself a "wild thing", she indicates that she believes that, like an animal, she is inherently untamable, and that it is her essential nature to run away from those who love her. In this way, Holly admits to her fear of commitment while suggesting that, like an animal, she is not responsible for her behavior. Directing her warning at Joe, Holly subtly indicates that he should prepare to be hurt when she inevitably leaves her life in New York.

Summary

Returning by subway from a job interview, the narrator sees a passenger reading a newspaper with the headline "Trawler Marries Fourth". He assumes that Trawler's bride is Holly, and is surprised. He explains that he hasn't seen Holly since the Sunday following Doc's visit, having been depressed after losing his job and learning that he may be drafted into the war effort.

Thinking about Holly and Rusty, the narrator is disappointed. He realizes that he is a little in love with Holly, in the way that he was once in love with his family cook and a neighborhood postman as a child. His love for her is no less potent for being unromantic or asexual. "That category of love generates jealousy, too," he explains.

At the next subway station, the narrator buys a newspaper and discovers to his relief that Rusty has not married Holly, but Mag Wildwood. When he returns to the brownstone, he finds Sapphia Spanella raving in the hallway, begging him to call the police. From behind Holly's door, the narrator hears the sound of crashing glass and furniture being overturned. He is soon joined by Jose, who brings a doctor. Jose opens the door with his own key. Inside, the three men find the apartment wrecked, all the contents smashed, and Holly lying on the bed in a stupor. The doctor injects Holly with a sedative while she rants incoherently about her brother, Fred.

While the doctor attends to Holly, the narrator and Jose discuss her outburst. Jose confesses that, given his high political office, he can't afford a public scandal. The narrator assumes that Holly's tantrum was provoked by Rusty's marriage to Mag, and Jose corrects him by passing him a telegram from Doc Golightly in Texas, which informs Holly that her brother Fred was killed in action.

The narrator relates that Holly never mentioned her brother again and stopped calling him Fred. Over the summer, Holly becomes a recluse, letting her hair darken and putting on weight. Jose moves into the apartment, though he is often in Washington. Nevertheless, the narrator explains, Holly seems happier, content learning to keep house, furnish her apartment, and speak Portuguese. She cooks elaborate, unsuccessful meals for Jose and the narrator, and begins talking about her future as Jose's wife. Holly confesses to the narrator that she is six weeks pregnant.

Elaborating on her devotion to Jose, Holly tells the narrator that though she has only had eleven lovers, she is happy to be leaving her promiscuous lifestyle behind. She tells him that she is tired of pretending to love men that she knew were "rats", and that excluding Doc, Jose was her "first non-rat romance." While Jose is not Holly's ideal man, she loves him, and caring for him gives her a sense of satisfaction.

Through the final weeks of summer, the narrator and Holly become closer, learning to communicate in silence. When Jose is out of town, he and Holly take walks to Chinatown and watch ships from the Brooklyn Bridge. Holly tells him that, one day in the future, she will return to New York on one of those ships, "me and my nine Brazilian brats." She confesses that she loves New York, even though the city doesn't belong to her and she doesn't belong to it. The narrator explains that he felt suddenly left out as Holly continued on her lifelong travels.

Analysis

Section 10 marks the first point in their friendship where the narrator realizes he is in love with Holly. Jealous of what he assumes is Holly's marriage to Rusty Trawler, the narrator begins to explore his feelings about her. He compares his love for her to the affection he felt for his family cook, his neighborhood mailman, and "a whole family named McKendrick." He suggests that this love was nonetheless powerful because it was non sexual, therein touching on another of the novella's main themes: the diversity and validity of loving relationships among adults. Moreover, in clarifying the asexual nature of his feelings for Holly, the narrator again implies that he is a homosexual.

Upon hearing of her brother's death, Holly's behavior is violent and self-destructive. She smashes glass and upturns all her furniture in a fit of despair, not caring who hears and without regard for the consequences. While Holly had described her bouts of the "mean reds", her behavior throughout the novella is remarkably upbeat and nonchalant, illustrating her minimal personal investment in her relationships. However, her rage at Fred's death indicates that her attachment to her brother was quite real and strong. The extremity of Holly's despair further suggests why she avoids permanent relationships, as her experience of pain is apparently intense and self-destructive. Avoiding real attachments is perhaps Holly's way to protect herself against the kind of pain she feels at her brother's death.

Fred appears to symbolize Holly's sense of freedom; a recurrent fantasy of hers was that the two of them would escape to Mexico, where they would raise horses. Accordingly, at Fred's death, Holly allows Jose to move in, thus "caging" her in her own apartment. She transforms herself into an "un-Holly-like" version of a stable, domestic housewife. She furnishes her apartment - something she claimed she wouldn't do until she felt she "belonged" - and stops dying her signature multi-colored hair. She becomes pregnant and attempts to learn cooking and Portuguese. She repeats to the narrator that she is happy and that she loves Jose, claims that appear too emphatic to be entirely sincere.

In an extended monologue, Holly justifies her reasons for settling down, claiming that she was tired of her promiscuous lifestyle, "rat" boyfriends, and her bouts of the "mean reds". Section 11 thus documents another of Holly's transformations. Yet, while Holly seems happy, the narrator is unconvinced that she has indeed settled down. He notes that while she is proud of her cooking, it is actually awful. The disjunction here between Holly's thoughts and reality indicates that, unlike her role as a socialite, "domestic wife" is a fictional part that Holly plays badly.

While section 11 ostensibly deals with Holly's transformation, it is implicitly concerned with the narrator's particular character flaw: his reluctance to be anything but a passive observer of his own life. While he recognizes that he loves Holly, he does not tell her this, and rather allows her to settle into a relationship with Jose that could take her to Brazil forever. The narrator's passivity is, in fact, exaggerated in this section by the fact that he has no dialogue apart from his telling Holly "do shut up." This remark is provoked by a sudden anger at his feeling "left out - a tugboat in dry dock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor." The narrator recognizes his perpetual feeling of exclusion is, like a boat moored to a dock, holding him back. However, he does not take direct action to change this quality.

The final metaphor of the section, which compares the narrator's final days with Holly to autumn leaves blowing in the wind, indicates the banality of Holly's new personality. Like leaves, the narrator can't tell the days apart, as they are all alike. The reference to autumn leaves, which are on the verge of death, symbolizes the end of the narrator's friendship with Holly.

Summary

On the 30th of September, the narrator's birthday, he waits in the vestibule of the brownstone for the postman, whom he hopes will be bringing money from his family. He runs into Holly, who invites him to go horseback riding as a last outing before she leaves to marry Jose in Brazil. She explains that she can't leave New York without saying goodbye to her favorite horse, Mabel Minerva.

The two take a taxi to Central Park. On the way, Holly explains that she will miss him, as well as Sally Tomato, who had warned her that the authorities suspected she was not his real niece. She tells him that O'Shaughnessy gave her $500 as a wedding present. The narrator, upset that she is leaving so suddenly, tries to tell her that she is already married, but she threatens to hang him if reveals that information and jeopardizes her marriage to Jose.

At the stables, Holly selects a sedate mare for the narrator, who is an inexperienced rider, while she mounts Mabel Minerva. As they ride across Central Park, the narrator is overcome with love for Holly, and realizes that his desire for her happiness is greater than his own need to keep her with him. This moment of exhilaration is cut short when a group of African-American boys leap out of the shrubbery and begin throwing rocks and taunting the horses. The narrator's horse rises on her hind legs and begins a violent gallop across the park and out into Fifth Avenue traffic.

Eventually, the narrator's runaway horse is brought to a halt by a mounted police officer and Holly, who has been following on Mabel Minerva. As a crowd gathers, the officer takes notes and arranges for the horses to be returned to the stables. Holly tells the narrator that he could have been killed, but he insists that he is only ashamed. When she kisses his cheek, however, he becomes dizzy and passes out on the sidewalk.

Back in his apartment, the narrator recovers in a bath while Holly sits on the edge of the tub, waiting to rub him with liniment. Sapphia Spanella knocks on the door and then enters, followed by two plain-clothes detectives, one male and one female. She points to Holly and identifies her as "the wanted woman". The female detective places her hand on Holly's shoulder and tells her kindly to "come along", but Holly warns her not to touch her, calling her a "driveling old bull-dyke." The officer slaps Holly, and the bottle of liniment flies from her hand and breaks on the floor. As Holly is escorted out of the apartment, she asks the narrator to feed her cat.

By that evening, the news of Holly's arrest is on all the front pages of the daily newspapers. To the narrator's surprise, the news had nothing to do with runaway horses; rather, Holly was implicated in a drug smuggling operation as an accomplice to Sally Tomato. O'Shaughnessy was also arrested, and revealed to be not a lawyer but a defrocked priest with a history of arrests for mafia activity. According to the press, Holly had been accused of acting as a liaison between Sally and O'Shaughnessy, conveying coded messages between the two men that allowed them to maintain control over a world-wide narcotics syndicate.

The narrator notices how the coverage distorts Holly's story for sensational effect, calling her a "movie starlet" when she was only an extra in films and claiming that she was arrested in "her luxurious apartment" when she was arrested in his own bathroom. One paper runs a story under the subheading "Admits Own Drug Addiction": while denying her knowledge of the narcotics ring to reporters, she admitted to having used marijuana. The papers also inform that narrator that despite her arrest, Holly remains unconvinced of Sally's guilt. "He's a sensitive, a religious person," she tells the reporters. "A darling old man."

Analysis

Section 12 depicts the narrator achieving closure over his grief at Holly's sudden departure. Holly convinces the narrator to go horseback riding, marking the final appearance of horses as a recurrent motif in the novella. Holly associates horses with her brother Fred, stating that she imagined settling down with him in Mexico to raise horses. As Holly and the narrator ride alongside each other, they both experience an exhilarating high, and, seeing Holly's happiness, realizes that he loves her so much that he values her happiness above his own, even if that means the end of their friendship. By placing him on a horse, Capote subtly aligns him with Holly's brother Fred, a person with whom she felt safe and cared for. This association suggests the strength of the emotional bond between the narrator and Holly.

The section also sets the two characters up for contrast. Holly and the narrator's description of the horseback ride - "a glad-to-be-alive exhilaration" - echoes that of the mask theft at Woolworth's. The similar language links the two excursions and sets them up for comparison. As during the escape from Woolworth's, the narrator challenges his own boundaries and breaks habit by engaging in one of Holly's typically "carefree" activities. His pure happiness during both the theft and the horseback ride indicates that Holly's unconventional and spontaneous attitude is what is missing from the narrator's own life, and suggests that his attachment to Holly is partly a wish to become more like her.

However, while the Woolworth's theft ends smoothly, the horseback ride soon becomes dangerous, as the narrator's horse gallops into traffic and endangers his life. This near-tragic end to Holly and the narrator's last adventure serves two purposes. First, it confirms the bond between the two characters when Holly successfully halts the narrator's runaway horse, despite such vigorous riding endangering her pregnancy. Moreover, Holly's rescue of the narrator foreshadows the concluding events of the novella, in which the narrator helps Holly escape from the law.

Section 13 is a structural departure from the rest of the novella. Breakfast at Tiffany's is a linear narrative: events are told in the order in which they happen. In section 13, the order is reversed: the reader is told about the consequences of Holly's arrest before the arrest itself. Moreover, the majority of the section directly quotes newspaper coverage of the arrest. Up until this section, the events of Holly's life had been conveyed to the reader through the narrator. This switch of perspective violates the reader's expectations. Section 13's non-linear narrative and an external source of information is surprising, as it upturns the established method of the novella. Capote uses an unexpected structure that mirrors the shocking turn of events.

A central concern of Breakfast at Tiffany's is the impossibility of objectivity. Lies, gossip, and stories, all claiming to be true, play crucial roles in transmitting information between characters and shaping how they think about others and themselves. By quoting at length from the newspaper coverage of Holly's arrest, Capote demonstrates that even the purportedly "objective" information of the newspaper is itself prone to the same kind of errors, exaggerations, and biases as the "fictional" stories he writes, and the "fraudulent" tales Holly tells. For example, the narrator explains, Holly was arrested in his bathroom, yet the articles claim that she was found in her "glamorous apartment." The press distorts reality for its own purposes, as does Holly and, perhaps, the narrator itself. This section suggests that story telling is inherently subjective.

Summary

Holly is in custody, and the narrator and Joe Bell speculate as to the truth of her involvement in Sally Tomato's crime ring. The narrator tells Joe that while she did carry messages from Sally to O'Shaughnessy, she did so unknowingly, and is therefore innocent. Joe implores the narrator to contact her wealthy friends to find Holly a decent lawyer.

In the telephone booth in Joe's bar, the narrator phones O.J. Berman, who is unavailable, and then Rusty Trawler. Mag Wildwood picks up the phone, and informs the narrator that neither she nor her husband will have anything to do with that "degenerate girl." She tells him that she always knew Holly was an immoral drug addict, and that she belongs in prison. The narrator considers phoning Doc Golightly, but then remembers Holly's warning that he never reveal the secret of her marriage.

Finally, the narrator speaks to Berman, who assures him that he has already hired the best lawyer in New York, Iggy Fitelstein, for Holly's defense. Berman claims that Iggy will be getting Holly released on bail that evening, and that she may even be home already. Yet, when the narrator enters her apartment that night to feed her cat, Holly is not there, and the following morning she still isn't home. Instead, the narrator finds a strange man in the apartment packing up Jose's wardrobe. The man resembles Jose, and admits to the narrator that he is his cousin. He asks the narrator to pass a letter from Jose along to Holly, and he agrees.

Two mornings later, the narrator visits Holly in her room at the hospital where she was admitted on the night of her arrest. The vigorous horseback riding had induced a miscarriage, which, she confides, she plans on blaming on the female officer who slapped her. She also tells the narrator about "the fat woman" - an ominous figure she sees in her deepest grief. She had first appeared to Holly after she heard of her brother's death, and, with the miscarriage, she had appeared again. She asks the narrator about Jose, and he shows her the letter. She asks him to read it aloud. Before he starts, she insists on applying makeup and puts on her signature dark glasses and pearl earrings.

The narrator reads Holly Jose's letter, which explains that though he loves her, he can't afford to marry a woman involved in a public scandal as it would compromise his high professional and religious stature in Brazil. He asks her forgiveness and blesses her and her child. Holly asks the narrator's opinion of the letter, and he admits that he found it honest and touching. The narrator sees that while Holly is trying to act nonchalant, she is devastated. Holly admits that she loved "the rat."

Holly changes topic, and begins discussing her plans to sue the state for inducing her miscarriage. When the narrator pleads with her to be reasonable and "make plans", Holly confides that she is planning on skipping bail that Saturday morning. She asks him to escort her from her apartment to the airport, where she still has reservations on a flight to Brazil. When he refuses, insisting that she "stick it out," she explains that the state has no interest in prosecuting her, and that they are only interested in her testimony against Sally Tomato, which she is unwilling to give.

Moreover, she wishes to escape public scrutiny. "Certain shades of limelight wreck a girl's complexion," she says. Even if a jury found her innocent, she explains, she would have no future in New York and no prospects with the local wealthy men. Her livelihood depends on her evading the trial. Before the narrator leaves, Holly asks him to find her a list of the fifty richest men in Brazil and to search her apartment for the St. Christopher medal he gave her. She believes she will need its luck for the trip.

Analysis

At the beginning of section 14, the narrator confides that he feels Holly was turned in by Sapphia Spanella, as she had already called the authorities several times complaining about Holly. Spanella objects to Holly's behavior on moral grounds; her main concern is Holly's promiscuous behavior. In the world of the novella, filled with outcasts, eccentrics, and other unorthodox personalities, Spanella represents the moral and social status quo of mid-century America. Her vicious persecution of Holly reminds the reader that mainstream society was far from hospitable to women like Holly, whose liberal and independent lifestyles did not conform to the dominant definition of femininity.

As the narrator and Joe Bell attempt to secure help for Holly, they find that their resources are limited. In particular, her former companions, the newly married Mag and Rusty, are suddenly unwilling to help her. Mag is particularly upset at the narrator's call, insisting that she and her husband will "positively sue anyone who attempts to connect our names with that ro-ro-roI[vol]ting and de-de-degenerate girl." She calls her a "hop-head" (drug addict) with "no more morals than a hound-bitch in heat." While O.J. Berman hires an important lawyer for Holly's case, it is on the condition that he not be personally implicated as her benefactor. The reluctance of Holly's friends to be connected to her in her crisis reveals the dark underside of Holly's seeming popularity. While Holly had been explicit about "using" her friends for money and favors, it appears that these people had also been using her, perhaps to bolster their own status on the New York social scene.

In contrast to her fickle society friends, Joe and the narrator remain dedicated to helping Holly, suggesting that their affection for her is sincere; an interesting dynamic when we consider the ways in which these characters differ from the people Holly typically chooses for friends. Both characters are gay, thus lacking a sexual connection to Holly, and poor, thus lacking a financial connection to her. The loyalty of Joe and the narrator in this section validates the relationships between gay men and women, demonstrating the strength of love that is not founded on sexual or financial need. Aware of the insincerity of need-based affection, the narrator is not surprised when, in section 15, he finds that Jose plans to abandon Holly via a letter, unwilling to even see her again.

Section 16, set in the hospital where Holly is recovering from her miscarriage, explores Holly's pathology in depth. Unable to discuss her sadness and fear directly, she invents another metaphor, the "fat woman", to explain her depression to the narrator. She confides that it was the "fat woman" who had overtaken her after Fred's death, and asks, "[now] do you see why I went crazy and broke everything?" Holly also defends herself against sadness with physical artifice, readying herself for Jose's letter by applying meticulous makeup, jewelry, and her signature dark glasses. As she transforms herself, the narrator notices that her child-like appearance hardens and she appears "armored." The makeup symbolizes Holly's constant attempts to "armor", or protect herself against emotion by assuming different, artificial identities. The presence of three Italian women in the hospital room, none of whom can understand English and who seem to misinterpret the narrator as Holly's lover, are figures for the external world in which Holly feels perpetually misunderstood.

While the narrator's ambiguous sexual orientation is hinted at in previous sections, section 16 offers the reader a more explicit acknowledgement that he is a homosexual. Holly addresses the narrator as "Maude," which, in the gay slang of the time, refers either to a male prostitute or a homosexual. Instead of defining the narrator outright as a homosexual, Capote identifies him with slang that would have been obscure to everyone those with intimate knowledge of the gay underworld. This subtlety, apart from protecting Breakfast at Tiffany's from censorship, adds an element of social critique to the novella, dramatizing the indirect and delicate way even sympathizers were forced to treat homosexuality in the hostile, homophobic milieu of war-time America.

Summary

On Friday, it is raining so heavily the narrator is convinced Holly's flight will be cancelled. Ignoring his warning, she escapes the hospital and waits for the narrator at Joe Bell's bar, where he has agreed to meet her after recovering some possessions from her apartment, including her jewelry, guitar, and cat. Joe advises the narrator against helping Holly, but he does so anyway, lugging her struggling cat down the block in the pouring rain.

At the bar, Joe, Holly and the narrator share a bottle of brandy. While Joe claims that he is unwilling to help her in her foolishness, he arranges a limousine for her trip to the airport, and awkwardly offers her a bouquet of flowers upon her departure. The narrator agrees to ride with Holly to the airport. In the back of the limousine, Holly changes from the riding clothes in which she had been arrested and into a dress. Due to the tension between them, the narrator and Holly don't talk, but rather peer out the car windows and drink brandy in silence.

In Spanish Harlem, a "savage, a garish, a moody neighborhood", Holly suddenly asks the driver to pull up to the curb. She steps out of the car, taking the cat with her. Telling the cat that this was the "right kind of place for a tough guy like you," she drops him on the curb and gets back in the car, ordering the driver to keep going. The narrator is stunned, and calls her a bitch.

Holly repeats the story of how she and the cat never belonged to each other, they "just met by the river one day." She explains again that they were both independent and never made each other any promises. Suddenly, however, she is overcome with grief, and when the limousine stops at a traffic light, she bolts out of the car and onto the street. The narrator follows her.

The cat is not on the corner where Holly dropped him. They search the neighborhood, but find only shady neighborhood residents, including a little boy selling a different cat for a dollar. Convinced that her cat is gone, Holly realizes that they "did belong to each other. He was mine." The narrator promises Holly he would return to the neighborhood, find her cat, and take care of it himself. She tells him that she is sad for herself, and that it was tragic to "not know what's yours until you've thrown it away." She admits that all the grief she had experienced was nothing compared to how she felt after abandoning her cat.

The next day, Holly's escape makes the headlines of the newspapers. However, when the authorities find her in Rio, there is no attempt to recover her. The narrator watches the coverage of Holly diminish, revived only once when Sally Tomato dies in Sing Sing on Christmas day of that year. In the absence of any word from Holly, the owner of the brownstone sells her possessions, and her apartment is rented out to a young man named Quaintance Smith. While he entertains as many "gentleman callers" as Holly did, Sapphia Spanella is infatuated with the young man and does not object to his disruptive behavior.

In the spring, the narrator receives a postcard from Holly informing him that she has moved on from Brazil to Buenos Aires, which she deems "not Tiffany's, but almost." She admits that she has become involved with a wealthy married man and writes that she will send an address once she finds a place to live. However, the narrator does not receive the address, which disappoints him, since he wished to let her know that he had sold two of his stories, had heard of the Trawlers' divorce, and was moving out of the brownstone. Moreover, he wanted to tell Holly that he had found her cat, behind the window of a cozy-looking home in Spanish Harlem. Happy that the cat now had a home, he wonders if Holly finally does, too.

Analysis

Section 17 narrates Holly's final day in New York. In another subtle allusion to the narrator's homosexuality, the narrator admits: "[never] mind why, but once I walked from New Orleans to Nancy's Landing, Mississippi, just under five hundred miles." Critics note that Nancy's Landing is a fictional place, intended by Capote as a code phrase for a gay resort or pick-up spot. "Nancy", in gay slang, refers to a homosexual who takes the passive, or "bottom" position during sex. Thus, the narrator's evasion - "never mind why" - serves as a coy admission that his journey to Nancy's Landing had an illicit, or taboo purpose. This reference is significant, however, beyond it's identification of the narrator's sexuality. As he admits that the walk to Nancy's Landing was "a light-hearted lark compared to the journey to Joe Bell's bar", he implies that he is willing to sacrifice more for Holly than for his sexual desires. Again, the novella demonstrates the validity and power of non-sexual relationships.

Section 17 thus continues the emphasis in section 14 on the sincere affection between Holly and the narrator, and, to a lesser extent, Holly and Joe. Joe, while claiming that he'll "have no part" of Holly's escape from the authorities, nevertheless hires a limousine to aid her flight. Like the narrator, Joe is unable to address his affection for Holly directly, and instead offers her a bunch of flowers on display in his bar. His exchange is awkward, however, and the flowers end up scattering on the floor. The flowers symbolize Joe's affection; their failure to properly reach Holly perfectly encapsulates Joe's inability to admit his love.

Section 17 also contains arguably the most memorable - and important - episode in Breakfast at Tiffany's: Holly's abandonment of her unnamed cat and her subsequent bout of remorse. Leaving the cat on a Spanish Harlem street, Holly intends to act nonchalantly about discarding the cat but soon becomes frantic, overeager to be rid of him. She tells the cat to "beat it" and "fuck off" and urges the driver to speed away from the street where she has left him. When the narrator expresses his disgust at this callous act, Holly explains again that she and the cat "never belonged to each other" and that they were both "independents". Nevertheless, her affection for the cat indicated that Holly's attitude toward the animal was ambivalent: while they were both "independents", they shared a home and a relationship. In fact, throughout the novella, the cat is the only consistent presence in Holly's life. By rejecting the animal completely, Holly indicates that she is again unwilling to accept a close relationship and to let something "belong" to her.

In previous sections and in her monologue in section 17, Holly indicates that she views her cat as she views herself, an essentially homeless, independent wanderer without a proper name or family. Her cruelty toward the animal thus appears to dramatize Holly's self-destructive tendencies: she acts out her anger and fear on the animal she sees as a figure for herself. Moreover, Holly's abandonment of the cat repeats her own rejection at the hands of her parents, friends, and, most recently, Jose.

However, Holly's change of heart, which inspires her to tears and sends her searching for the cat in the rain suggests there is hope for her character. Realizing that she and the cat "did belong to each other...he was mine", Holly admits that no tragedy in her life had been as frightening as "not knowing what's yours until you've thrown it away." This confession presents Holly in her most genuine, honest moment in the novella, and marks the climax of her relationship with the narrator. She admits vulnerability and love for her cat and a need for a relationship in which there is mutual belonging. Strikingly, Holly confesses that both the "mean reds" and the "fat woman" are "nothing," dismissing her usual evasive metaphors for grief in favor of directly admitting her sadness.

The concluding section of Breakfast at Tiffany's resolves several plot threads while leaving others open-ended. The novella returns to the frame narrative, which focuses on the question of Holly's presence in Africa. Speaking in the present, the narrator quotes from newspaper articles that documented Holly's discovery in Rio, which fortunately did not lead to another indictment. The death of Sally Tomato severs Holly's ties to the criminal case against her and the gossip surrounding her slowly dies down, resolving the plotline of Holly as a refugee. The plot thread that focused on Holly's personal struggle with identity and belonging, however, is left unresolved. The narrator reveals that while Holly wrote him soon after her escape, she had yet to find a permanent address. As he never heard from her again, he assumes that she either never found this address, or forgot about him. This turn of events refutes those of the previous section, which suggested that Holly was on the brink of a positive personal transformation. While she had recognized and acknowledged her need to love and be loved, Holly's postcard informs the narrator that she has returned to her old ways, using men for their money, unable and unwilling to find a stable home. That she did not stay in touch with the narrator retroactively casts a negative light on their friendship, and suggests that perhaps her feelings for him were not as strong as they had appeared.

Despite the rather negative ending to Holly's tale, the conclusion of the novella is positive in tone. The narrator relates that a young man named Quaintance Smith moved into Holly's apartment, where he entertained as many male visitors as Holly without the judgment of Sapphia Spanella. The mention of his many "gentleman callers", along with the name "Quaintance" - a reference to George Quaintance, a painter of the 1940s and 1950s whose art was overtly homosexual in content - suggest that the new tenant is gay, practicing an unorthodox lifestyle that links him symbolically with both Holly and the narrator and extends the novella's theme of community between sexual outsiders beyond Holly's departure.

The most positive aspect of the novella's ending, however, is that we learn that the narrator has maintained warm feelings toward his old friend. He keeps his promise to her and searches Spanish Harlem for her cat, which he sees behind the window of a homey-looking room. He muses that, along with a home, the cat likely has a name; he is "certain he'd arrived somewhere he belonged." A home and a name were, for Holly, the two signifiers of belonging, and the narrator hopes that Holly has achieved the same things. This sentiment demonstrates the narrator's continued affection for Holly even in her absence. That the novella concludes by exploring his warmth for Holly suggests that the novella was less about Holly than about how loving her transformed the narrator's own life.

• Biography of Truman Capote
• About Breakfast at Tiffany's
• Character List
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• Short Summary
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• Summary and Analysis of Section 1
• Summary and Analysis of Section 2
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• Summary and Analysis of Sections 5 & 6
• Summary and Analysis of Section 7
• Summary and Analysis of Sections 8 & 9
• Summary and Analysis of Sections 10 & 11
• Summary and Analysis of Sections 12 & 13
• Summary and Analysis of Sections 14 , 15 & 16
• Summary and Analysis of Sections 17 & 18
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