The Role of New York City in Truman Capotes Breakfast at Tiffanys - Term Paper Example

The Role of New York City in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s Introduction The city of New York plays an important role in Truman Capote’s short novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but it is a subtle role. Capote does not devote nearly as much text to his descriptions of the city as he does the descriptions and interactions of the characters, but he uses his descriptions as a sort of canvas on which to display the themes he is presenting. In this essay, those themes, which are mostly different kinds of conflicts, are discussed in the context of the settings – the different descriptions of the city, or rather, the small parts of it in which the characters move – in which Capote places them. This will illustrate how New York City does in a sense play a role as an important character in the story. 1. The City and the Characters’ Moods The most important mood-setter is the novel’s namesake, of course, the famous Tiffany’s, which is a real-life New York landmark. Holly Golightly treats the place as her refuge, and it is described in appropriate terms: A quiet, genteel place filled with beautiful things (“the smell of silver and alligator wallets”) and well-mannered, sophisticated people. When she describes her dream that someday she “will wake up and have breakfast at Tiffany’s,” it is a rather obvious metaphor for what Holly is seeking in life, a peaceful place where she is wealthy, comfortable, and content. This is certainly not the way her life is at the time of the story, and it is implied that it is an impossible aspiration for her. Thus, from her perspective – which we only see second-hand through the eyes of the narrator – New York is everything Tiffany’s is not: noisy, chaotic, and filled with people of questionable character and behavior. Even so, Holly hints that it suits her perhaps better than she wants to admit to herself, which is revealed in her wish to return someday “with her nine Brazilian brats” to see the city as she describes it at that moment on the Brooklyn Bridge; bright, almost bejeweled by the lights and the river, which subtly ties her impression of the city to her impression of Tiffany’s, her “ideal” place. We get a better impression of the use of the city as a setting for the moods of the characters and the story from the narrator, since his impressions are first-hand. Thus, what he is feeling at the moment – happiness, anxiety, despair – is reflected in rather direct terms by his description of the setting; what is going on around him at the moment, and what the weather is like. The story is book-ended by bad weather, as a matter of fact; in the beginning, the narrator travels to Joe Bell’s bar “in a downpour of October rain” to learn what mysterious thing Joe must tell him about Holly, and at the end, he helps Holly make her escape by retrieving her belongs from her apartment, struggling through another rainstorm to bring them to the bar. In a way, the rain – which, at least for a little while, isolates the narrator from the rest of his surroundings – signals his apprehensions of a major change. There are other examples of the city reflecting the narrator’s mood throughout the story. Immediately after leaving the bar to visit his old building, he describes his street as being rather forlorn, with the wet leaves making the sidewalk slippery underfoot; it is as though he is unsettled, and feeling he needs to tread carefully through his own memories. Those memories, though, are of better times, because he implies this by recalling the bright way in which the now leafless trees used to create patterns of sunlight on his street. The narrator uses the description of the city and his immediate surroundings to tell us that the memories linger on, but that life as far as he’s concerned is no longer the same. For example, his description of his old brownstone points out that it “had been sleeked up” since he had lived there that a new door has been installed, and only one of his original neighbors – the bothersome Mrs. Spanella – still lived there. Other examples are even more obvious than the ones at the beginning and end of the book. The narrator describes the city as bright and cheerful on the day he learns his story is to be published, and there is even a military parade that “seemed to have nothing to do with war, but to be, rather, a fanfare arranged in my personal honor.” By contrast, on the day he meets Doc Golightly and learns Holly’s real story, the city seems to be as unsettled as he is, and warning of difficult times; he walks with Doc on “a cold and blowy day” with “the fashionable awnings flapping in the breeze.” In another example, the city environment subtly reinforces his frustration – his own version of “the mean reds,” as he describes – after his falling-out with Holly, when he believes for a short time that she has actually married Rusty Trawler, on top of being concerned about finding a job and worried that he may be called by his draft board; the “city heat” has “reduced him to a state of nervous inertia” where he is not really sure what to do. In fact, he takes a subtle dig at Brooklyn by implying that without serious cause (to attend a job interview in this case) he would never be on the subway to Brooklyn; the suggestion is that Brooklyn is outside his comfort zone (New York proper, or Manhattan), and that he is perhaps feeling rejected by the city, wondering if he actually belongs there. The theme of “belonging,” which can be expressed in a variety of ways, is an important theme of the book and perhaps its most significant conflict, as pointed out by analyses such as Hassan (1960) and Curley (1960). The conflict is between stability and permanence and freedom and impermanence, with the narrator representing the former and Holly Golightly representing the latter. The descriptions of New York and the characters’ reactions to it also play an important role in supporting this comparison. 2. The City as a Permanent Home or a Temporary Place to Live For the narrator, New York is home; for Holly, New York is a temporary place. Some of the character of the city is revealed in the narrator’s descriptions of his “hither and yonning” with Holly. The narrator’s descriptions of the places they go is in some ways very matter-of-fact. For instance, they steal masks from a Woolworth’s after traveling all over the city to find peanut butter (finding the last jar in a “delicatessen on Third Avenue”), and after stopping by the “antiques shop” to look at the bird cage which Holly eventually gives to the narrator as a Christmas present. But he gives no descriptive details of any of these places; they are familiar to the narrator, so by assuming they are familiar to the reader as well, the idea of New York as “home” is reinforced. Sometimes the narrator acknowledges the bustle and variety of New York, and does this most noticeably when describing the ‘stability’ that makes it his home; for example, the rather old and quiet nature of Joe Bell’s bar (“with neither television nor neon”) is described as “not like the other bars on Lexington Avenue”, suggesting that “finding a place where one belongs” is an important theme. As discussed in the previous section, when things are troubled, the city almost seems to be oppressive, forcing the narrator away to Brooklyn in the summer heat to look for a job. The effect is difficult to detect in some respects, however, because there is a certain constant ugliness about the city and even the places where the narrator feels at home. For instance, at the very beginning of the story when the narrator remembers his apartment, he pointedly describes the brownstone building as “rundown”, with walls that are “a color rather like tobacco-spit,” with old furniture upholstered in itchy red velvet that reminds him of the “seats on the tram”. The last bit is a specific connection of the description of the apartment to the city itself; obviously, trams are a form of public transportation he frequently uses. There are a couple places in the story where the idea that Holly is out of place in New York is revealed through descriptions of the city, but these follow the most revealing descriptions of the men she keeps company with, Sid Arbuck, the first man the narrator sees, and the men at her party. These characters represent the city in the sense that if New York (or any other city for that matter) is fully-defined by half physical presence and half human population, the men are a sort of description of the city’s personality. Sid Arbuck is described as “short and vast” (and, in a sly sign of how little Holly thinks of him, she calls him “Harry”), and comically ill-mannered; when it becomes clear Holly has no intention of sleeping with him, he attempts to break down her door, and ends up falling down the stairs. The description of the first man the narrator sees in Holly’s apartment when she invites him for a drink (as a way to thank him for reminding her to go visit Sally Tomato at the prison) is even more imaginative: A “creature” whose “... bald freckled head was dwarf-big: attached to it were a pair of pointed, truly elfin ears. He had Pekingese eyes, unpitying and slightly bulged. Tufts of hair sprouted from his ears, from his nose; his jowls were gray with afternoon beard, and his handshake almost furry.” We then meet, in quick succession, the agent O.J. Berman, several military officers, older men, and Rusty Trawler, a man the narrator describes as reminding him of a toddler who is perpetually on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum. The thing all these men have in common – which also includes a group of men the narrator saw Holly with at the “21” club (another New York landmark) who reminded him of Sid Arbuck – is that they all clearly want something from Holly (which is obviously to sleep with her). So here is a subtle comparison between the narrator’s feeling at home in New York and Holly’s feeling as though she is just passing through: The narrator recalls ‘ugliness’ of the story’s setting – tobacco spit-colored walls and itchy seats like a tram – with nostalgia, suggesting he feels comfortable with it; but for Holly, the ‘ugliness’ represented by the people, most specifically by her using these men whom the narrator finds extremely distasteful, is just a means to an end that she has to tolerate. Another scene where the point is made that Holly is ‘out of place’ in New York is when the narrator spots Holly at the library. The narrator, after pointing out in so many words that Holly is not the sort to frequent a library, colorfully describes the act of entering the library himself to follow her as, “I let curiosity guide me between the lions.” “Between the lions” is a euphemism that describes what one would be doing walking up the steps of the main New York Public Library located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in the heart of Manhattan; two large stone lions flank the wide staircase. The description indicates what a New York landmark and permanent fixture the library is – although, interestingly, at the time of the novel’s setting around the year 1943, the Public Library was only about 40 years old, having been founded in 1895 (New York Public Library, 2013). Another part of the story where the idea that Holly does not feel as though she is at home in New York is in the important scene on the Brooklyn Bridge. The narrator again explains where they had been with that assumed familiarity (“walked all the way to Chinatown, then moseyed across the Brooklyn Bridge”) but then contrasts that with a vivid description of the city as seen from the bridge (“the seaward-moving ships pass between the cliffs of burning skyline”). The “walked all the way to Chinatown” gives a sense of scale, although one has to be familiar with New York City (or, as was the case for this essay, rely on the trusty information provided by Google Maps) to realize it. The narrator’s and Holly’s brownstone is described as being in “the East Seventies” – in other words, east of Central Park and between 70th and 79th Streets – somewhere near Lexington Avenue where Joe Bell’s bar was located. Chinatown is near the southern end of Manhattan, a distance of about seven kilometers. Combined with “cliffs” of skyline, the effect is to make New York seem enormous – in a sense, the whole world to the narrator, or all the world he feels he needs. But as Holly’s musings about traveling away and coming back someday reveal, it is not nearly a big enough world for her. 3. New York and the War From the narrator’s perspective, the idea that New York is ‘world enough’ is subtly implied with the noticeably brief references to the war as well; despite the fact that the novel is set in the very midst of World War II, that receives very little notice. The city is untroubled by it, and therefore so are the lives of its main characters. The one obvious event in the city directly related to the war – the parade the narrator and Holly encounter – is treated like a happy coincidence to the narrator’s learning that his story will be published, and any larger, darker meaning to the activity is dismissed. The entire scene involving the narrator’s and Holly’s outing following his learning of the upcoming publication of his story, even though it revolves around the mysterious discussion of Holly’s childhood, establishes the importance of New York to the narrator and Holly alike, although their perspectives are very different. It is a bright, clear day, with the only mark being made on the sky, as the narrator describes it, coming from the smoke from a fire of fallen leaves a park worker is tending. Holly and the narrator visit obvious New York landmarks – Fifth Avenue, where the parade is taking place, and Central Park – but not another which is implied to be a ‘usual’ thing to do, a visit to the zoo, which Holly detests because “she hates to see creatures in cages”. The comparison is that the narrator feels happy in New York, but Holly fears being trapped by it, a feeling that is explained overtly by the symbolism of the bird cage later on in the chapter. The downplaying of the war is more significant in the context of when the novel was written; in 1958, the war would have been a living memory for the story’s readers. In that light, the image of New York of “all that world that matters” from the narrator’s point of view would have been much stronger, because it would stand in stark contrast to a period of time when the war – which was taking place all across the world – had a strong impact on everyone’s lives. The timing of the part of the story when the narrator is happiest – when he learns of his story’s publication – is interesting with respect to the war as well; October, 1943, specifically the last part of the month (we know it was near Halloween because of the masks the narrator and Holly stole from Woolworth’s), was exactly the midpoint of America’s involvement of the war, which lasted from early December, 1941 to early September, 1945. A quick check of the major events of the war at that time shows that it was a grim period – the US Army was bogged down in heavy fighting in Italy, and Air Force bombing raids over Germany were suffering heavy losses (eHistory.com, 2013). For readers that would have been personally aware of these events, the image of life in New York being completely unaffected by them would have been quite significant. It is only when trouble enters into the lives of the narrator and Holly that the war has what might be considered a more “normal” negative impact on them. This was first revealed in the trouble with finding peanut butter to send to Holly’s brother Fred; peanut butter was evidently in short supply because of the war, requiring a great deal of effort to locate and buy. It is not apparent at this point in the story, but we realize later on that the difficulty in some small way foreshadows Fred’s death. By making peanut butter so difficult to find for a desire that turned out to be grimly futile anyway, the city is in a vague sense acting against Holly’s wishes. For the narrator, the war becomes a factor by way of the worry about the Draft Board (which represents New York as a literal institution) when he is at his low point, looking for work and still feuding with Holly. 4. Symbols of Belonging In the ending of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, New York City serves as a symbol of the idea of “belonging” or “finding one’s place in the world” in a couple of ways. The chain of events, very briefly, involved Holly waiting at Joe Bell’s bar while the narrator retrieved her things from her apartment, then being accompanied by the narrator to abandon the cat in Spanish Harlem before proceeding to ‘Idlewild’ (which is the old name for New York’s JFK International Airport) to take a flight to Brazil and escape the charges against her. The city in these last events of the story seems to be working to prevent Holly from leaving. The charges against Holly in the first place (it is easier to think of them in the terms they would have been written in real life: “The City [or State] of New York vs. Holly Golightly”) are an attempt to prevent her from following her desires and leaving. Once she is released on bail, she has to hide in the safety of Joe Bell’s bar – the only place at that point where she is safe – while the narrator collects her things from her apartment, a task that is made more difficult by the rainstorm and the fact that he has to sneak in by way of the fire escape to avoid the people watching the building. Then the narrator and Joe Bell express their concern that heavy fog and the rainstorm will prevent her flight from leaving. It does not, but in order to “win” against the obstacles the city is putting in her path, Holly must first suffer the loss the of the cat, and the realization that she may be wrong. The episode with the cat is interesting, not just from the realization Holly has that “he belonged to her”, but also from the curious role the city plays in the scene. To start with, Holly decides to release the cat in Spanish Harlem, ostensibly because it is a tough neighborhood suited for a tough cat like her companion – again, this is a hint of the theme of “belonging.” Spanish Harlem, however, is in the opposite direction from the airport at Idlewild; according to the map, Spanish Harlem lies north of the characters’ neighborhood, while the airport is far to the south, on the south side of Brooklyn and Queens. Holly, perhaps, is revealing a bit of uncertainty even before releasing the cat by choosing to go in the wrong direction – something we might not expect someone “jumping bail” and needing to leave quickly to do. Spanish Harlem also figures in the very end of the tale. Among all the places in New York that appear in the story, it is probably described in the most detail. Before Holly releases the cat, the narrator paints a picture of the neighborhood as “a savage, a garish, a moody neighborhood garlanded with poster-portraits of moves stars and Madonnas. Sidewalk litterings of fruit-rind and rotted newspaper were hurled about by the wind...” Later, keeping his promise to Holly to find the cat again, the narrator describes spending weeks “roaming through those Spanish Harlem streets”, finally to find the cat looking quite at home “in the window of a warm-looking room,” a nice place to belong in the midst of the ‘savage, garish, moody neighborhood’ he earlier described. The message here could very well be that New York, which is big, diverse, and sometimes dirty and dangerous, provides a place for everyone if only they can find it; and the implication of that is that Holly might have, too, if only she’d given it a chance. Conclusion The examination of New York as a character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is not an easy one, because its role is not as obvious as other themes of love, relationships, and identity; the importance of the city as a setting for the story is presented subtly and indirectly throughout most of the story. Yet it is very important; as a character, the city reinforces the emotional state of the main human characters, sets the tone for different parts of the story, and serves as a symbol in a number of ways. It is revealed mainly by descriptions of things close to the characters; their neighborhood, the characters – really, caricatures of people – they encounter, and glimpses of places to which they venture. Overall, the ‘scale’ of description is used as a crude indicator of mood; when the characters and events are most positive, the city seems bigger. In all the various ways in which the character of the city is revealed, for the narrator, it is a symbol of home and stability; in the midst of the bustle of the city, he finds places where he belongs and as a consequence treats the entire city with a sort of casual familiarity. For Holly, however, the variety and activity are symbols of impermanence; she enjoys it, but in many ways does not feel a part of it, and what’s more, the manner in which the city treats her seems to be a kind of rejection. Only when she is at the eponymous Tiffany’s – a key landmark in New York –she feels something similar to what the narrator feels in the city at large; which for Holly, makes it an unrealistic ideal. References Curley, T.F. (1960) “The Quarrel with Time in American Fiction”. The American Scholar, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 552-560. eHistory.com. (2013) “World War II Timeline”. http://ehistory.osu.edu/wwii/timeline.cfm. Hassan, I.H. (1960) “The Daydream and Nightmare of Narcissus”. Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 5-21. Hassan, I.H. (1960) “The Birth of a Heroine”. Prairie Schooner, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 78-83. New York Public Library. (2013) “About the New York Public Library”. http://www.nypl.org/help/about-nypl. Read More