About
Author: Truman Capote (USA)
Genre: Domestic Fiction
Setting
Place: New York City
Time: 1940s
My Rating (see what this means)
My Subjective Rating: 4
My ‘Objective’ Rating: 2.69
Introduction
Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a cult classic movie based on a marvelously well written novella by Truman Capote. It follows the life and times of one charming young lady Holly Golightly as she tries to find her happy place in a world that wants to cage her.
Being a popular book and a popular movie – there are enough resources and reviews already available online. So I won’t try to add another one.
Instead I want to use this blog to ponder upon how the book and the movie are different and which ending do I prefer?
Discussion (Has Spoilers)
There are a few key differences between the movie and the book – including the arc of the narrator’s/Paul’s affair – but the fundamental difference lies in the ending –
The final scenes in both mediums include Holly on the way to the airport to catch a flight to Rio de Janeiro despite a broken engagement with her rich Brazilian fiancé (due to her stupid run-in as a drug-lord’s mule). The narrator/Paul is trying to dissuade her as she releases her unnamed cat in an unknown neighborhood –
- In the book – she ends up catching the flight and leaves for a life of continuous flux – possibly as a mistress of a rich Argentinian father of several children, or possibly somewhere in Africa. Paul can only hope she finds her happy place.
- In the movie, perhaps for the happy-ending commercial success demands, she realizes the mistakes of her choices, driven by Paul’s passionate dissection of her –
“You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing. And you’re terrified somebody’s going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it is not unbounded in the west by Tulip, Texas or the east by Somaliland. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”
Holly decides to stay back and get together with Paul for a happily ever after.
The Happily Ever After –
For Holly, a happy place would be something like Tiffany’s (and hopefully with her brother Fred) –
What I’ve found does the most good (for me) is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real – life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.
In the movie – let’s imagine her Tiffany’s to be with Paul, they have a son which they name after her, now dead, brother Fred – and Paul, like her much older first husband the Doc, loves her dearly. Then a few years down suppose the routineness of her life of Holly makes her start feeling caged – and she decides to fly away again. Didn’t she once warn Paul – If you let yourself love a wild thing – you’ll end up looking at the sky. Yes – voluntary marriage to Paul isn’t problematic like a the forced-by-circumstance child marriage to Doc – but knowing what we know of Holly – it isn’t implausible she changes her mind.
Now if we follow, Holly from the books – she finds an almost Tiffany’s in Buenos Aires (as a mistress of a married man with several children) but that doesn’t last. Flux continues and she finds herself on an African adventure – gets a beautiful wood sculpture of herself carved, and then again no trail. She is perhaps dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. Perhaps married and quieted down.
The book, while more ambiguous, seems more characteristic of Holly’s personality – a wild thing. It might stem from her broken childhood. The death of her brother Fred cuts the one potentially stabilizing root that could have held her. And the narrator/Paul’s love for her – which seems genuine (or is it because he is after all the narrator), could not implausibly be thought off as another cage. There were men in her life who loved her as much.
Existentialists would argue – Tiffany’s can be where you want it to be – with Paul or as a mistress or as rich and alone. Perhaps for Holly it can’t be anywhere for no matter where you run, for you just end up running into yourself. Or hopefully it is on the run itself.
And here is one of the great rendition of a great song from the movie!
Picture Credits:
- Cover Picture: Breakfast at Tiffany’s Movie
- Jacob Collier