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Breakfast at Tiffany's Section 5: Difference between revisions

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Holly also lies when a situation is not to her liking. At the first party, when an acquaintance, Mag Wildwood, barges in and draws the attention of all the men, Holly retaliates by insinuating that Mag has a terrible disease. Another time, to keep Mag from learning that she has slept with Mag's lover, Jose, Holly breezily pretends she is a lesbian, partly to deceive Mag and partly for the humor of the deception (Garson 82, 83).
Holly also lies when a situation is not to her liking. At the first party, when an acquaintance, Mag Wildwood, barges in and draws the attention of all the men, Holly retaliates by insinuating that Mag has a terrible disease. Another time, to keep Mag from learning that she has slept with Mag's lover, Jose, Holly breezily pretends she is a lesbian, partly to deceive Mag and partly for the humor of the deception (Garson 82, 83).


Holly's moral code and the fact that she is a real phony are exemplified in this section when she goes to the library and reads through books about Brazil and South America.  Holly is trying to morph herself into a person from South America and this is our first clue that Holly is planning on going back to Brazil with Jose (whether Jose knows this or not is not presented to us).  I believe this is what O.J. means by a "real phony".  She is definitely not from Brazil, or even South America, but by the time she makes it there, she will be able to act like she has lived there all her life, as shown to us by the way she could change from a farm-raised girl to a Hollywood actress to a New York [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeloader freeloader].
Holly's moral code and the fact that she is a real phony are exemplified in this section when she goes to the library and reads through books about Brazil and South America.  Holly is trying to morph herself into a person from South America and this is our first clue that Holly is planning on going back to Brazil with Jose (whether Jose knows this or not is not presented to us).  I believe this is what O.J. means by a "real phony".  She is definitely not from Brazil, or even South America, but by the time she makes it there, she will be able to act like she has lived there all her life, as shown to us by the way she could change from a farm-raised girl to a Hollywood actress to a New York [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeloader freeloader]. But we must sympathize with Holly, for like Hassan points out, "even Holly's incorrigible tomcat finds at last a home with potted palms and lace curtains, a home and a name; but for Holly the narrator can only pray that she may be granted, sometime, somewhere, the same" (5-21).


Capote himself was a storyteller. Nance claims Holly's "brief presence in Capote's life was his own breakfast at Tiffany's, his taste of the idyll which always vanishes, leaving pain" (122-23).
Capote himself was a storyteller. Nance claims Holly's "brief presence in Capote's life was his own breakfast at Tiffany's, his taste of the idyll which always vanishes, leaving pain" (122-23).
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