“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Truman Capote (post 5): Author’s uncertainty about his own name is reflected in naming of Holly, Narrator, and Cat

Holly has fled to South America or Africa. When leaving New York, she had abandoned her unnamed cat on the streets of Spanish Harlem. And the very last scene of the story is when the unnamed narrator finds the unnamed cat:

“I had found him. It took weeks of after-work roaming through those Spanish Harlem streets, and there were many false alarms—flashes of tiger-striped fur that, upon inspection, were not him. But one day, one cold sunshiny Sunday winter afternoon, it was. Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he’d arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too” (1, pp. 104-105, the end).

At the end, everyone has a name (Holly/Lulamae has at least two) except the narrator.

Did the author have naming issues? He did. Truman Garcia Capote was born Truman Streckfus Persons. He was renamed when he was adopted by his mother’s second husband. He expressed his own sense of what his real name was in a 1964 interview:

“I was born in New Orleans in 1924. (By the way, my name isn’t Capote at all—I’ll explain that later.) My father’s name is Persons, and he was a salesman” (2, p. 38).

He doesn’t say that Capote was not his original name. He says “my name isn’t Capote at all.” Which makes me wonder if he had a Capote personality and a Persons personality, and it was Persons speaking.

1. Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany’s [1958]. New York, The Modern Library, 1994.

2. M. Thomas Inge (Editor). Truman Capote Conversations. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1987.