Naming as Identification

Major Themes

Stability vs. Freedom

The psychological struggle between the need for stability and the desire for freedom is perhaps the central concern of Breakfast at Tiffany's. The conflict structures the relationship between the narrator and Holly, who are opposing forces. While the narrator is happy to have his first home, Holly is consumed by her need to constantly escape from places, people and things. Even Holly's identity is in a constant state of flux. Holly assumes the name "Holiday Golightly", which encapsulates her strategy of avoiding stability by making a holiday out of life, and abandoning relationships and responsibilities when they threaten to jeopardize her freedom. For Holly, the distinction between stability and freedom is articulated by two of the novella's major symbols: animals (including Holly's cat) and Tiffany's (in which Holly feels properly "at home"). Holly despises the caging of animals, and refuses to name her cat. As a "wild thing", she feels he doesn't "belong" to her. Her fantasy that one day she will have, "breakfast at Tiffany's," an absurdity since Tiffany's does not serve food, indicates her choice to avoid stability by casting it in the unattainable ideals of fantasy.

By casting the two main characters on opposite sides of the stability/freedom divide, Capote suggests that each has something to learn from the other. The mutual influence of the two friends is demonstrated by their Christmas gift exchange, in which Holly gives the narrator a bird cage and the narrator gives her a medal of St. Christopher. Each gift illustrates a median between stability and freedom: Holly's gift is a cage, but it will never imprison a bird, and the narrator's gift is a medal of the patron saint of travel, but it comes from Tiffany's, Holly's personal symbol of home. By the conclusion of Breakfast at Tiffany's, it is clear that this influence has, at least in part, been realized: Holly confesses her sense of "belonging" with her cat, and the narrator reveals that, since the conclusion of their friendship, he has enjoyed lengthy trips around the world.

While Holly and the narrator represent different psychological impulses toward stability and freedom, Breakfast at Tiffany's suggests that both characters' pathologies stem from the sense of social exclusion common to people whose lifestyles do not conform to American convention. Indeed, both characters are consumed with a sense that they do not belong or are not "at home" in the larger world. The narrator feels a constant outsider, his nose pressed against a glass, and Holly is convinced that she is a "wild thing", unsuited to a proper place in society. Thus, Holly and the narrator are similar insofar as for both of them, "home" has become a charged object of fantasy and longing.

Naming as Identification

Throughout Breakfast at Tiffany's, the act of naming is invested with special significance. The novella is populated with characters whose names or nicknames suggest their defining personality traits. For example, the "wild" socialite is Mag Wildwood, and the homosexual is Quaintance Smith, whose name references the gay artist George Quaintance. The abundance of meaningful names in Breakfast at Tiffany's draws a parallel between naming and personal identity that provides the reader with particular insight into the novella's main two characters. Notably, the narrator's name is never revealed to the reader, an omission that heightens the reader's sense of him as an "outsider" of both society and the narrative itself. Holly, also a mysterious character, changes her name to prevent others from knowing about her impoverished roots. Moreover, she refuses to name her pet cat, as she feels he doesn't properly "belong" to her. This statement indicates how, within the world of the novella, proper names symbolize both personal and public identity. Like the cat, the narrator's unnamed status in the novel suggests that he doesn't "belong" to any person or thing. However, unlike the cat, the narrator willingly withholds his name to protect his personal identity. Holly's use of a pseudonym and her reluctance to confer a name on her cat are thus symptoms of her general rejection of stability. She refuses to take or give a fixed identity until she feels at home in the world.

Rebirth

Many of the important events in Breakfast at Tiffany's occur on or around Christmas Day. The discovery of the African carving that resembles Holly and provokes the narrator to relate his story occurs on Christmas Day, 1956. On Christmas Eve, 1943, Holly and the narrator exchange gifts that confirm the strength of their friendship and symbolically articulate each character's desire for both stability and freedom - he gives her a St. Christopher's medal, and she gives him a birdcage. Finally, Sally Tomato dies in Sing Sing on Christmas Day, 1944, thus releasing Holly from her last pressing ties to New York City.

The motif of Christmas appears to be most linked to Holly, as her two pseudonyms - Holiday and Holly - are references to the "holy day" and the traditional plant of Christmas, respectively. Within the Christian tradition, Christmas is a symbol of rebirth, as the birth of the Messiah enabled His followers to be "born again" through His teachings and the ritual of baptism. Moreover, Christmas heralds the beginning of the Western New Year, a time which many feel holds the possibility of new beginnings. Holly's narrative presents her as "re-born" into different personae and attitudes at several key points that correspond to Christmas. The gift exchange (1943) confirms her presence in the narrator's life, Sally's death (1944) severs her connection to New York and thus the narrator, and the discovery of the carving (1956) marks Holly's final transformation into an art object that inspires the narrator's own art: the written narrative that is Breakfast at Tiffany's.

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Breakfast at Tiffany's is deeply concerned with the purpose of art and its shifting position in mid-century consumer culture. Holly is the novella's major symbol for art. Her persona is entirely self-constructed. Even her signature appearance is, as the narrator discovers, the result of deliberate artifice. Her hair is dyed, she diets, and conceals her poor eyesight with stylish dark glasses. Aside from concealing her true identity, Holly's self-fashioning implies that she sees herself an artificial object, an art work of her own creation. It is this artificial persona that the wealthy men in Holly's life pay for, establishing Holly as not only an art object, but as one that is sold as a commodity in the sexual marketplace.

Holly's willingness to sell her body and her image extends to her attitude towards art in general. She is particularly baffled by the narrator's reluctance to write primarily for profit. In the narrator's aesthetic ideology, art is a profound expression of personal and social truths and is thus unsuited to the often crass tastes of mass culture. Altering his writing to suit the demands of the masses would compromise the narrator's artistic integrity, something he is unwilling to do. Holly and the narrator are both artists of sorts; their difference lies in their distinct attitudes towards art's position on the popular market. Indeed, the characters' major dispute centers on the question of whether or not art is a commodity.

As with other differences between Holly and the narrator, the characters' attitudes towards art appear, by the end of the novella, to be less distinct. The narrator begins selling his fiction successfully. Holly, now symbolized by the African carving of her head, comes to represent a less commodified definition of art: the carver refuses to sell the carving to Yunioshi, even when he is offered a large amount of much needed goods and money. The carving is a personal expression of the artist's affection for Holly. Despite a lifetime of selling herself to the highest bidder, Holly's final image is not for sale.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 837