“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Truman Capote (post 3): Nameless Narrator and Holly Golightly are introduced as people with multiple personality issues

At this story begins, the two main characters are the nameless, male, first-person narrator, who is an aspiring writer, and his New York City neighbor, whose card says, “Miss Holiday Golightly,” and in the corner, “Traveling.”

Holly

She is nineteen, but appears to be “anywhere between sixteen and thirty” (1, p. 12) and is described by a Hollywood actor’s agent, who has followed her to New York, as “nuts” and “a phony.” But, he says, “she’s a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can’t talk her out of it.” He says that someone had “spent maybe thousands sending her to head-shrinkers. Even the famous one”…but “he threw in the towel”…“Mind you, I like the kid, everybody does…” (1, p. 29).

She is also described as having, at least at times, “boyish” hair (1, p. 12) and voice (1, p 16), and handwriting that is “a freakishly awkward, kindergarten hand” (1, p. 26).

Why has she suddenly traveled to New York, just when she had been up for a part in a movie? Why does her apparent age range from kindergarten (handwriting) to sixteen to thirty? Why do her gender attributes vary from boy to girl to woman? Why is she described as truly crazy, but also as very likable and socially engaging?

The above is a description of a person with multiple personality, who probably has alternate personalities of different ages and genders. And as I have said in past posts, when someone seems crazy, but in other ways seems not crazy, and is very socially engaging—people with multiple personality may be very socially engaging, but people with a true psychosis are usually not—think of multiple personality. I would guess that her sudden travels are that symptom of multiple personality, dissociative fugue (search in this blog).

Nameless Narrator

Reviews of this novella will mention the narrator’s namelessness, but not have a good reason for it. They let it pass, because other writers have done the same thing and so reviewers are used to it.

But for a first-person narrator, who is one of the two major characters in the story, to never tell people his name, never have another character ask him his name, never be addressed by name, is ridiculous.

In this story, the only reason for his namelessness I can think of is to enable Holly to call him “Fred,” her brother’s name, but that doesn’t work, because you would expect it to prompt the narrator to reply that his name is actually whatever it is, but he doesn’t.

In the world of this story, contemporary New York City, it simply does not make sense for a major character to have no name. Then what was the author’s reason?

Only in the world of multiple personality is namelessness common. Although many alternate personalities have names, many others don’t. And since many fiction writers feel obliged to tell the truth about their characters, if the alternate personality who was narrating this story did not have a name, Truman Capote was not going to lie about it.

Search “nameless” for previous discussions.

1. Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany’s: A Short Novel and Three Stories [1958]. New York, The Modern Library, 1992.