Breakfast at Tiffany's Section 1

Summary

The narrator gets a call from Joe Bell about a friend of theirs from fifteen years ago: Holly Golightly. The narrator goes to visit Joe's bar, where Joe shows him photos of what seems to be a bust of Holly, found by the photographer I.Y. Yunioshi in Africa. The narrator leaves disappointed, and walks back to his old apartment's mailboxes, thinking about Holly Golightly.

Notes

brownstone (3) — a old stone used for building, particularly in New York City. Used this way, it's understood to mean a rowhouse clad in brownstone still found in many of New York City's older sections, like the narrator's "East Seventies" (3).

early years of the war (3) — the narrator is speaking of World War II, during which the US was involved from 1941 to 1945.

Lexington Avenue (3) — presumably near 70th Street. The site of Joe Bell's bar.

Weimaraner dogs (4) — The Weimaraner is a silver-grey breed of dog developed originally for hunting.

Our Gal Sunday (4) — A radio show that aired on CBS from 1937-1959, featuring a Colorado orphan who marries a British aristocrat that originally started in 1904 as a Broadway play titled Sunday and starring Ethel Barrymore. The story never lacked melodrama or stereotypical characters.

Gilbert and Sullivan (4) — A collaborative duo of playwright/lyricist Sir W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) who defined operettas or comic operas in Victorian England with a series of their internationally successful works.

gladiola (5) — the common name for the gladiolus, a flowering plant that grows from two to six feet tall, with individual blossoms that measure from one to six inches from tip to top.

Tums (5) — a popular antacid.

“I read it in Winchell” (6) — Walter Winchell invented the gossip column at the New York Evening Graphic. He broke the journalistic taboo against exposing the private lives of public figures, permanently altering the shape of journalism and celebrity.

Tococul, East Anglia (7) — East Anglia is a region of eastern England consisting of Norfolk and Suffolk, but this can't be what Capote had in mind. It seems that “Tococul” is meant to suggest an exotic location in Africa: “a village in the middle of nowhere and of no interest” other than it's not NYC (6).

pig-English (7-8) — Short for "pidgin": a hybrid English. Pidgin is new language which develops in situations where speakers of different languages need to communicate but don't share a common language, in this case English and an aboriginal tongue.

coloratura (11) — A type of soprano; also a type of singing which pertains to great feats of agility — fast singing, high singing, trills, embellishments, etc.

Commentary

The unnamed narrator, matured greatly as a writer since knowing Holly, has aged fifteen years since he has seen Holly Golightly and takes place in the present, in October, the fall of the year. Most of the novella is a reminiscence by the narrator of the time he knew Holly Golightly and her influence on his life. Both he and Joe Bell are getting old, and the narrator has become a realist, one who has experience with life — perhaps a bit cynical. Joe, however, wants to believe that Holly has been to Africa — that she is living the jet-setting life that he can share vicariously. To Joe, Holly is the celebrity on the cover of People; he longs to share in her life, even if it's from a distance.

The narrator's tale centers around Holly Golightly. Her name suggests an unattached, unconventional, ephemeral wanderer, in pursuit of that feeling of happiness that one would have on eating breakfast at Tiffany's (Nance 65). Perhaps the goal or the dream might not be as important as how she pursues it, capturing the hearts of the people she encounters, like she has the narrator and Joe Bell. She is, perhaps, the dreamer — the romantic — part of the narrator that has left him fifteen years hence. The narrator is now a cold observer of the world around him; he has perhaps lost that sense of wonder that he had when Holly had been a part of his life. He greatly admires her, and at the beginning of the novel, he longs to capture something that he seems to have lost from his past: his own breakfast at Tiffany's (Nance 122-23).

While Holly is just mentioned in the opening section of BaT, Joe Bell is described in detail. It seems, opines Tison Pugh, that Joe, like the narrator, is probably homosexual (51-53). However, this observation does not seem to be as important as seeming desperation to recapture something that Holly represents for him. He maintains that his desire for her is not sexual, so it seems to suggest something vital and alive that Joe's anonymous bar does not provide. He and the narrator are heading toward death, and Joe wants what he sees in Holly: "a wild and homeless love of freedom" (Hassan 18).

Study Questions

What is the narrator's mood before he meets Joe Bell; how has it changed by the time he leaves? Why?
How old is the narrator? What is his profession?
In what year does the opening of the novella take place?

External Resources

Cash, Matthew. A Travelin' Through the Pastures of the Sky: A Critical Analysis of Breakfast at Tiffany's. 1996.

Works Cited

Hassan, Ihab. "The Daydream and Nightmare of Narcissus." Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature 1. 2 (Spring 1960): 5-21.
Nance, William L. The Worlds of Truman Capote. New York: Stein and Day, 1970.
Pugh, Tison. "Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's." The Explicator 6.1 (Fall 2002): 51-53.

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