Breakfast at Tiffany's What's in a Name?

Breakfast at Tiffany's What's in a Name? The Characters in Breakfast at Tiffany's Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella, a short work of fiction that has little more than one hundred pages. One of the devices used by author Truman Capote is the choice of unique and interesting character names. The device allows him to create a sense of time and place as well as portray his characters more vividly.

Capote's considerable skill as a writer brings World War II-era New York alive, despite the economy of words required by the novella format. The story's protagonist first learns about his neighbor by reading the name on her mailbox: Miss Holiday Golightly. The reader knows at once she is a special, almost magical, person who takes nothing seriously in life. "Miss" makes us think of a young, single woman. "Holiday" calls to mind parties, celebrations and time away from work.

That she is nicknamed "Holly" makes the reader think of Christmas and all its pleasant associations. "Golightly" suggests to the reader that the character goes through life lightly, both literally and figuratively. In fact, when the narrator later meets her, our expectations are confirmed: Holly is a pixie-ish blonde whom bartender Joe Bell describes as a "skinny girl" with "a flat little bottom" (Capote 9). Not only is her footprint small and light, Holly is also light-hearted.

She speaks in a cheerful, breezy way and does not seem to give a thought to any time but the present. The three sequential "L" sounds in the name Holly Golightly almost seem like singing: la-la-la. Once again, it brings the reader back to the Christmas, calling to mind the carol "Deck the Halls," where "boughs of holly" are used and the chorus is sung "fa-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la." As the reader progresses into the story, the sad, dark truth about Holly is revealed.

The gaiety and lightness implied with her name contrast starkly with the reality of which we learn. Holly's name is not her own -- she was christened Lulamae Barnes (Capote 66). The story's narrator, as is the reader, is startled to learn that "Golightly" was Lulamae's married name; Holly left the name "Lulamae" behind in Texas with her much-older husband and brood of stepchildren. "Lulamae Barnes" is literally and figuratively thousands of miles and a lifetime away from Holly Golightly. Other characters are revealed in part through their names.

The narrator is known as "Fred;" it is the moniker given by Holly because he reminds her of her beloved brother, who, before the story's end, is killed in action overseas. Holly has put the past behind her as best she can, but holds on to the best part of it, her brother, by using the name when she talks to her neighbor.

The bartender, Joe Bell, is an "average Joe;" his bar was a place where Holly and the narrator would go "six, seven times a day, not for a drink, not always, but to make telephone calls" (Capote 4). His surname alludes to Bell Telephone, the phone service that would have been in use in the 1940s. Like the telephone, Joe is present in the lives of the characters throughout the story, a seldom thought-of yet constant fixture who relays information.

At the beginning of the story, it is he who tells the narrator he has some word of Holly's whereabouts, setting up "Fred" to tell the story of Holly and everything that happened to her. Capote makes several other characters more memorable because of their names. Mag Wildwood sounds like a plain country girl with her abrupt first name and woodsy last name that was also given to the town in Arkansas from which she came, small rural, and.