47 pages • 1 hour read
Truman CapoteBreakfast at Tiffany's
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1958A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Complexities of Love and Sex
Breakfast at Tiffany’s portrays the complicated relationship between love and sex. Many of the relationships are built on a foundation of sexual desire. Holly wants to be loved but the world around her sees her only in terms of sex. The men who attend the party at Holly’s apartment, for example, are demonstrably physically attracted to her, even if they have spent little time talking to her. Similarly, men feel entitled to sex after spending time talking to Holly. In the opening chapters, a man insists that he should be allowed into her apartment (to pursue a sexual relationship, by implication) because he paid for Holly’s dinner. Likewise, another date becomes abusive when drunk and Holly is forced to exit through the fire escape and wait in the narrator’s room because the men in her life treat sex with a sense of entitlement which is devoid of love.
Women also treat Holly’s sexuality in a similar manner. Holly’s neighbors and even her friends (including the narrator) imply that she exchanges sex for money, even if Holly vehemently denies this. Holly is forced into a position where every relationship in her life is predicated on the complicated intersection between sex, love, money, and social power dynamics, meaning that she is forced to adhere to society’s expectations regarding sex, even if she does not agree with these views. For all of Holly’s attempts to find a secure, loving relationship, society’s obsession with sex means that she is caught in a seemingly impossible position.
Holly asserts control over certain relationships and designates them as demonstrably platonic. Well before the narrator realizes that he does not love Holly in a sexual way, she has already categorized him as a platonic friend. The narrator has no identity but Holly creates one for him; she calls him Fred because he reminds her of her brother. In this fashion, Holly subtly classifies the narrator as a non-sexual person in her life but still someone who is capable and worthy of love. Unlike the men who treat Holly badly when they realize that she is not interested in them sexually, Holly frames her relationship with the narrator in distinctly non-sexual but distinctly loving terms. She loves him like a brother and he comes to appreciate this, even though he needs a long time to realize that Holly’s perception of their relationship is more accurate than his.
The platonic nature of Holly’s relationship with the narrator provides her with a literal and a figurative means of escape. When her reputation is ruined by scandalous rumors and accusations, she seemingly has few people left in her life. The men who were only interested in her as a sexual object completely desert her. Instead, she is left with her platonic, loving friends: the narrator, O. J. Berman, and Joe Bell, all of whom are never sexually linked with Holly. Instead, their friendships are her reserve of peace when life and sexual expectations become overwhelming. When Holly is in real trouble, these same platonic friends help her to escape the country. Holly searches for love in the world and she finds it best when it is devoid of sex. Due to the expectations society has placed on Holly (and the abuse she has suffered in the past), her best experiences of love are those which are separated entirely from sex. While Holly seems to know this from the outset, her experiences teach this lesson to the narrator and allow him to grow as a person who is more capable of understanding the valuable distinction between love and sex.
The Search for Independence and Belonging
Holly's search for independence is a key theme in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Holly craves independence because she grew up in such difficult circumstances. Holly and her brother Fred are raised by abusive foster parents. After her two siblings die, she and Fred run away from home. They escape because they want independence. To the young Holly, independence is informed by trauma. She specifically wants to be free from abuse so, to her, this is what independence means. Unfortunately for Holly, she is taken in by Doc Golightly. Despite his insistence that he was acting in Holly's best interests, Doc marries Holly when she is just 14 years old. By her own admission, she was too young for this marriage to be legal or for her to give informed consent to the relationship. The marriage, like so much of Holly's early life, is a form of abuse. She runs away again, first to California, and then to New York City. At each step of her journey, Holly's desire for freedom is a desire to be free from abuse. She never feels like she belongs anywhere because everywhere she goes, people force her into abusive circumstances. As such, her formative ideas of independence are impossible to separate from the trauma that she has suffered.
As an adult, Holly wrestles with her understanding of independence and belonging even though she often lacks the tools needed to comprehend such ideas. She resorts to gestures which validate her beliefs. For example, she adopts a cat because she senses that she and the animal share an understanding of independence which does not necessarily apply to most people. The cat exists on its own terms, which is what Holly hopes to do. She refuses to name the cat because she does not want to impose an identity on the creature that it did not select for itself. In this sense, Holly is simultaneously striving to forge her own identity. She is widely regarded as a unique and fascinating person, mostly because she defies conventions and lives life on her own terms. She does not adhere to society's expectations of a woman, especially in regards to her independence. Many men try to foist their control on Holly, either through physical intimidation, financial means, or by disparaging her character. Holly ignores these men, rejecting their expectations of her identity just as she believes the cat should not have to bear any identity she projects upon it. She may not fully understand the terms of her own independence, but Holly has an instinctual understanding of what she does and does not want.
By the end of the novel, Holly's sense of belonging betrays her. Driving to the airport to escape the scandal that threatens to ruin her reputation, she confesses to the narrator that she is scared that her life will continue to be directionless and wayward. Her pursuit of independence—without the terms or definitions which might guide her—has often led her astray and left her with a sense that she does not truly belong anywhere. Holly does not feel as though she belongs in New York, nor is she sure that she belongs anywhere else. This fear is never resolved. She hints in a message to the narrator that she is happy with life in Buenos Aires, but then he hears rumors of her hiking across Africa. Holly's search for independence never ends; her desire for belonging is never fulfilled. Given the unique nature of her character, however, she may never find a place for herself in a society which refuses to tolerate the idea of a strong-willed, independent woman who lives on her own terms.
The Subjective Nature of Perspective
Breakfast at Tiffany's is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, which immediately introduces the novella’s thematic preoccupation with the subjective nature of perspective and interpretation. Although he is the person telling the story, the narrator is far from the protagonist. Instead, Holly is the central figure in the story—she is the most compelling figure, whose introduction into the narrator's life prompts the distinction between the dull, uneventful life that came before and a suddenly interesting mode of existence. The narrator did not have a story worth telling until he met Holly, meaning that his role in the story is that of a passive observer. His observations of Holly’s character, habits, and lifestyle speak to the subjective nature of perspective: since Holly is so carefully guarded, he can only attempt to piece together information about her life and seek to interpret her character in his own way.
Other characters also offer their own perspective on Holly throughout the novella, with each character’s interpretation of her inadvertently revealing something about themselves. Doc Golightly sees Holly as a willing child-bride and someone he spoiled and indulged—an act of myth-making that enables him to avoid facing the reality of the abuse. O.J. Berman tried—and failed—to craft Holly into a Hollywood movie star. Mag interprets Holly primarily as a sexual rival with whom she must compete in order to secure an eligible rich man for herself. Jose falls in love with Holly’s free-spirited and charming nature, only to abandon her once he realizes that she will never fit into the role of a respectable politician’s wife that he envisioned for her. Even the narrator and Joe Bell—who are ultimately Holly’s most loyal friends—struggle to know who Holly truly is. The narrator, as an aspiring writer, becomes fascinated by Holly as though she were a character—his act of writing her story further mythologizes her. The narrator's perspective is somewhat sympathetic, but nevertheless intrusive and limited: he repeatedly attempts to peer into Holly's private life in an attempt to convey the whole story, but never fully succeeds.
At the end of the novel, the limitations of the narrator's subjective perspective are made especially clear. Holly leaves the city, mired in scandal, and the narrator never sees her again. Aside from a brief communication via postcard, the narrator's understanding of the rest of Holly's life is limited to rumors and gossip. Joe Bell tells him that Holly may have been seen in Europe but the narrator himself confesses that she could be dead, alive, or even living in New York without their knowledge. Holly simply vanishes, leaving the narrator with no ending to his story and no resolution to his novel. The end result of his narration of Holly’s life is to highlight her impact on the lives of others and to illustrate just how elusive she has proved herself to be—even those who felt they knew and loved her best never really knew her at all.
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By Truman Capote
