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Breakfast at Tiffany's Section 11: Difference between revisions
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*'''bouche fermez''' (102) - French for "mouth close" | *'''bouche fermez''' (102) - French for "mouth close" | ||
*'''twat''' (103) - Is a vulgar expression originally used to refer to the human vagina. | |||
*'''Purple Heart''' (103) - Is a U.S. military decoration awarded in the name of the President of the United States to those who have been wounded or killed while serving in, or with the U.S. military after April 5, 1917. | |||
*'''Maude''' (103) - In homosexual slang, "maude" signifies a male prostitute or a male homosexual. | |||
==Commentary== | |||
While she is recovering in the hospital, the narrator goes to Holly's apartment and discovers Jose's cousin packing his things. The man leaves with Jose's possessions giving the narrator only a letter,from Jose to Holly. Holly is public displayed on the front page of every newspaper: "PLAYGIRL ARRESTED IN NARCOTICS SCANDAL" was just one of the headlines. This was too much for Jose, whose entire life was strictly more dedicated to his public career than to a wife and a family. He fled for Brazil saying in his letter to Holly:" But conceive of my despair upon discovering in such a brutal and public style how very different you are from the manner of woman a man of my faith and career could hope to make his wife. | |||
Verily I grief for the disgrace of your present circumstance, and do not find it in my heart to add condemn to the condemn that surrounds you." (Cash 1) | |||
Second, when Holly tells the narrator that she will not testify against Sally Tomato, she calls the narrator a name laden with queer meaning:" Well, I may be rotten to the core, Maude, but: testify against a friend I will not." In homosexual slang, "maude signifies a male prostitute or a male homosexual.The narrator himself makes a veiled reference to his homosexuality when he compares his rain-soaked trip from Holly's apartment to Joe Bell's bar to another difficult journey he had made years ago: "Never mind why, but once I walked from New Orleans to Nancy's Landing, Mississippi, just under five hundred miles. Nancy's Landing is Capote's creation; it does not exist geographically. According to A Dictionary of the Underworld, "Nancy" refers either to the posterior or to "an effeminate man, especially a passive homosexual." "Nancy's Landing," then serves as Capote's code phrase for a homosexual.Thus, the narrator's coy rejoinder that the reader should "never mind why" he made the trip appears as a subtle move to direct attention away from his self-confession (Galenet 2). | |||
Holly labels Jose' "a rat" like all the others, although she finally agrees bitterly with the narrator that Jose's reasons for giving her up-his religion and his career-are valid for the kind of man he is. Holly then decides to flee the country, using the ticket for Brazil that Jose' had brought her. For a time it seemed that Holly had found her dream, her "place where me and things belong together." Her relationship with Jose' might have been like her vision of Tiffany's, with "quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there" (Garson 84,85). | |||
In his book, ''Truman Capote'', Kenneth Reed states that ''Breakfast at Tiffany's'', shares with most of Capote's other fiction a concern for people who are liberated from the more commonplace moorings of social and cultural life, and who are scarcely concerned with such things as family relationships and middle class notions of respectability.For example, when the narrator warns Holly that if she jumps bail, she will never again be able to come home, it impresses her not at all (Reed 92). | |||
==Study Questions== | |||
* If Jose' was so concerned with his career,why would he get involved with someone like Holly? | |||
* Why does Holly call the narrator a maude? | |||
* Did Jose' know that Holly was pregnant with his child? | |||
* Was Holly a prostitute? | |||
* Did the narrator love Holly? | |||
==External Sources== | |||
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Heart] | |||
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/twat] | |||
[http://galenet.group.com/servlet/LitRC?TI=Breakfast] | |||
[http://www.personal.umich.edu/~bcash/criticalanalysis] | |||
==Works Cited== | |||
Cash, Mathew. ''A Travelin' Through the Pastures of the Sky:A Critical Analysis of Breakfast at Tiffany's.'' 1996. <http://www.personal.umich.edu/~bcash/criticalanalysis.html>. | |||
Garson, Helen S. ''Truman Capote''. New York: Ungar, 1980. 84,85. | |||
Reed, Kenneth T. ''Truman Capote''. Miami University (Ohio): Twayne, 1981. 92. | |||