A Short Re-examination of Holly Golightly's Character in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany's, which is one of the easily-recognizable short novels written by Truman Capote, may be viewed as a vital work of fiction that needs to be re-examined and evaluated for its characterization of Holly Golightly.

Let us first frame what this story is about.

Truman Capote, one of America's literary masters, published this story in 1958 about a young naiveté girl from Texas who braved and traveled to New York City.

Ms. Golightly, a young carefree girl with dark and bruised past, dreamed and traveled to New York City to escape her sordid life. She was characterized by Capote as a person who is charming and naiveté yet deliberately flighty, promiscuous, and intensely preoccupied with herself.

In some respect, this literary work, which is a character sketch in form, failed to meet certain relevant evaluation criteria of this genre.

The first and most important criterion we will use is truthfulness. How realistic was Ms. Golightly realized in the novella. Is she plausible as a fictional character? A character must be plausible. This means that the character must be clear and easily comprehensible to the reader. Somehow though, Ms. Golightly's character as flighty then dismissive in another scene and then promiscuous in other. This characterization is not properly supported and explained because the motivation why she was so in the first place was not explained completely. What appears on the book is that anecdotes and random episodes in Ms. Golightly's life is hewn and sewed to fit into the character of Holly but unavoidably turned out to be incoherent.

Our second criterion is affirmation. Affirmation is that quality which means that humans are worth caring and writing about no matter how debased their lives or how totally they abuse their situation. As a whole, Breakfast at Tiffany's which was loved by many people and has even influenced American women to travel to New York City during the years when it was lionized by critics, showed a confused character who is made to look charming by Capote by giving her an ethereal or young look for comparing her to cute 12-year-olds and whatnot. What is sad, Ms. Goligthly could not even be called a role model for young teens because she was a distasteful character. Ms. Golightly is promiscuous and this attitude leads her to treat people around her really badly. She ignored or was untoward to those who treat her well, then kissing those who treat her like trash but who are richer and more famous. She is self-centered and ignores feelings of other people around her.

There is also racial stereotyping imputed or delivered at this novella such as when Ms. Golightly referred to Mr. Yuioshi, Ms. Golightly's neighbor, as "Jap." Although this was meant to look charming in the novel, again, this is unsettling.

Overall, Breakfast at Tiffany's is not Capote's best but it is one good piece of a light-hearted novella but not worth second reading to be remembered.