"Space" and "Place" in Truman Capote's Short Stories
Introduction
Whenever we see Truman Capote (1924-84) in books on a history of American literature, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) and In Cold Blood (1965) are listed as his masterpieces. It is often written that the former treats homosexual as a theme and the latter is a "nonfiction novel." However, we should notice that his short stories are also splendid. He describes human psychology and the modern society directly or indirectly. There are a great variety of types; from a story treating loneliness to a heartwarming one; from a surrealistic work to one composed of facts.
Capote writes many short stories. His early eight stories in A Tree of Night and Other Stories are divided into two categories; one is called "the nocturnal styles" or "the darker stories," and the other is "the daylight styles" or "the sunlight stories." They are grouped, according to the tone of the stories. The former is dark, destructive, gothic, grotesque, and sometimes supernatural. On the other hand, the latter is somewhat comic, humorous and sometimes even heartwarming.
From the viewpoint of the setting, the nocturnal stories are set in New York (except "A Tree of Night") and the daylight styles are in the South. That is, the city or the country is the scene of each story. When we turn our eyes to later stories, we realize that it is convenient to divide Capote's works by the settings when we discuss them. In Music for Chameleons there are many works we hardly classify by tone.
Though the city and the country of Capote's works are not the main themes as those of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, John Dos Passos's U. S. A. and other Local Colorist's works, they are strongly the most important factors. The impersonal city life affects Capote's people and they show us some different aspects of the modern society. In the Southern country they lead an easy life reminding us of one scene of America in the good old days.
However, it is better to make up another category: stories in enclosed space. They have such settings as a train, a prison, a cemetery, and a room. Each setting is in New York or in the South, but enclosed space is apt to give a person a particular effect. Its nature is unique and worth analyzing. As some stories in the South are included in stories in enclosed space, the group of the South can be narrowed to that of the Southern country town.
Roughly speaking, there are three types in the settings of Capote's works: New York, the Southern country town, and enclosed space. (Some do not come under three types.) We will consider these spaces, and ideas of space” and place” by Yi-Fu Tuan help us understand them. "Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other." This is the basis of his notions.
"Space" is more abstract than "place." What
begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as
we get to know it better and endow it with value.
. . . The ideas "space" and "place" require each
other for definition. From the security and
stability of place we are aware of the openness,
freedom, and threat of space, and vice versa.
Characters in Capote's works are often lonely. Some of them stray in search of their own "place," and others long for "space." We will study his stories by observing the structure of space.
In Chapter I we will observe "Miriam" (1945) and "Master Misery" (1949), which portray loneliness in the city. We will see other New York stories, "The Headless Hawk" (1946), "Shut a Final Door" (1947), "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1958), "A Day's Work" (1979), and "Mr. Jones" (1980) in Chapter II; stories in the Southern country town, "Jug of Silver" (1945), "Children on Their Birthdays" (1949), "A Christmas Memory" (1956), and "The Thanksgiving Visitor" (1967) in Chapter III; stories of enclosed space, "A Tree of Night" (1945), "A Diamond Guitar" (1950), "Among the Paths to Eden" (1960), and "A Lamp in a Window" (1980) in Chapter IV. In Chapter V we will consider the meanings of each space.
Chapter I
In New York City I
In "Miriam," one of the most famous short stories of Capote, Mrs. Miller buried in the city life is followed by a girl called Miriam. Many critics say Miriam is an alter ego or a second self of Mrs. Miller. Miriam is said to be "a self bold and adventurous" by Ihab Hassan, "an extension of her [Mrs. Miller's] destructive, unconscious instinct" by Paul Levine, or "self-assured, demanding, forceful, beautiful, and young" by Helen Garson. She is so, to be sure, but can be regarded as a carnation of Mrs. Miller's will for space. This is presented by three meetings of Mrs. Miller and Miriam.
At first let us see Mrs. Miller's way of life. She lives alone in a pleasant apartment near the East River. She has no friends and the range of her life is within the corner grocery. "Her activities were seldom spontaneous: she kept the two rooms immaculate, smoked an occasional cigarette, prepared her own meals and tended a canary." Her everyday life is quiet and bored.
It is at the theater that Mrs. Miller sees Miriam for the first time. There is an important meaning in this first encounter. In this story, the theater is a symbol of the impersonal city; for people in a theater go into their own world when a movie starts, and are alone though a large audience is present. It implies lack of human relationships. Those who are watching a movie hardly pay attention to others and do not get in touch with them. Thus, the girl whom Mrs. Miller meets in such a place is her own self. We also see it in the analysis of dreams that a movie displays a self-image.
A movie theater is a closed place. It has a peculiar atmosphere: people are physically shut up and darkness makes an infinite space and separates them from the real world. Films show them various human dramas of individual and collective selves and sometimes make them experience the virtual reality. At that moment the theater changes into a comfortable place. It is also a place for fun, while it may be said that it is a place free from the reality. Some go to the movies to entertain themselves, while others go to forget sad events or divert themselves. Mrs. Miller also watches a movie as an entertainment, but for her it is also an escape from the passionless reality.
The second meeting is on the night when it has been snowing for a week. "In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city" (5). Mrs. Miller, losing a track of days, goes to a grocery though it is Sunday, and sits up later than usual. These suggest that her nerves begin to break down. This is because the fearful space of snow over everything has an effect on her. We acquire a sense of security in a place by confirming landmarks of the place. If we see the things exist from a window in the morning, we find everyday life in the scene. As for Mrs. Miller, she falls into the unreal world because all landmarks are covered with snow. And Miriam, her alter ego, comes to see her.
Miriam coming in the room without reserve wants to listen to a song of the canary, which is sleeping. Why does Mrs. Miller have a canary? Of course, because she intends to get her loneliness off, but we shall think it more carefully. The rooms where Mrs. Miller lives alone are quiet unless she makes any noise. She feels them wider when hearing than watching. We can recognize the size of a room at sight, but without sounds we will feel the space much wider than what it really is. Silence enhances our solitude or loneliness except when we are indulged in something. Solitude is the best condition to concentrate on our mind or give full play to our imagination. For Mrs. Miller silence is a helper to develop her loneliness. She keeps a canary in order to reduce the auditory space. It may be worth pointing out, in passing, that the bird in a cage is symbolic of Mrs. Miller living in the enclosed space. Miriam's act to try to wake the bird means that she tries to awaken Mrs. Miller's hidden self.
Miriam pesters Mrs. Miller for the brooch which her husband gave to her. At the time, "it came to Mrs. Miller there was no one to whom she might turn; she was alone; a fact that had not been among her thoughts for a long time" (7). Her patterns of behavior are routine and she acts according to them. Mrs. Miller is, so to speak, a machine or a robot without thinking. Miriam, however, reminds her of one feeling which is a motive causing some actions: loneliness.
Touching a paper rose in Mrs. Miller's room, Miriam says, "How sad. Aren't imitations sad?" (6) Imitations are similar to the genuine in the shape but are different in essence. Though Mrs. Miller seems to adapt herself to the lonely city life superficially, she feels the sense of profound solitary. Miriam unveils the sad state of Mrs. Miller living so monotonously that she has lost her identity and does not understand herself. The paper rose also displays her lack of vitality and withered love. Leaving the room, Miriam criticizes what Mrs. Miller is by stamping the lifeless flower.
Miriam's aggressive energetic behavior and her act such as going out at night or breaking the vase represent Mrs. Miller's desire, and they originate in her restrained feelings. The old woman is naturally attracted to the little girl somewhere in her heart. She goes around the shops, purchasing some things, roses, cherry, and almond cakes, which Miriam requested before her third visit, "as if by prearranged plan: a plan of which she had not the least knowledge or control" (9). It is clear that she is unconsciously waiting for Miriam because she is lonely and is looking forward to seeing her.
But Mrs. Miller cannot accept Miriam when she is actually called on by her. Why not? The reason will be explicit if the meanings of space and place are taken into consideration. Mrs. Miller leads unchanging ordinary life in her place which protects her from various enemies, but she unconsciously yearns for openness, freedom, and possibilities of city space. She wishes excitement to some extent in daily life, contacts with others, and acts bound by herself. The acceptance of Miriam, therefore, means that Mrs. Miller denies her way of life which she has considered right; her modest quiet life, or even herself.
Considering the events that happened for the last few days, Mrs. Miller reaches the conclusion:
[T]he only thing she had lost to Miriam was her
identity, but now she knew she had found again the
person who lived in this room, who cooked her own
meals, who owned a canary, who was someone she
could trust and believe in: Mrs. H. T. Miller. (12)
She thinks that she lost sight of herself because she met Miriam and that she restores it again. It is a big mistake, for Miriam is her true self and Mrs. H. T. Miller whom she finds is only a mask to hide it, a persona. In the last scene, she sees Miriam again.
Why does Mrs. Miller begin to see Miriam? The space of her life from her room to the corner grocery is very small and limited. She does not intend to go out of her place which gives her safety and stability, and is unwilling to seek for space. Looking for space, in which there are liberty and freedom, makes us go to the next step. "Human beings require both space and place. Human lives are a dialectical movement between shelter and venture, attachment and freedom."3 Thus we can say Miriam comes from Mrs. Miller's unconscious desire for space. As mentioned above, her restrained feeling is the unfulfilled desire. And loneliness in the city has strengthened it. Though a lot of people--young and old, men and women--live in the city, she, hardly touching others, tends to withdraw herself into her shell. For her the city is an enormous space and she feels only its menace. But there is another Mrs. Miller who is longing for freedom and possibilities hidden in space; she is Miriam.
There are two scenes that describe the threat of space. Mrs. Miller goes to the movie, "leaving one light burning in the foyer: she found nothing more disturbing than a sensation of darkness" (3). It is obvious that she is afraid of infinite space, darkness. Another scene is a snowy landscape before Miriam's visit. Snow covering everything and falling all day makes the limitless white space. Since it causes a kind of madness to her, she cannot tell the day. Thus it is interesting that the menace of space is described by means of using two opposite colors, black and white.
"Master Misery" describes the essences of the city and the country most clearly in Capote's early short stories. The protagonist, Silvia, works as a typist in New York. She has no acquaintances except Henry and Estelle. They are grown up in their hometown, Easton, and live in New York with her but annoy her. Silvia wants to have her own room, because they are married and always flirtatious, and it makes her feel that she is alone and has no place. Her wish to separate from her childhood friends who reconstruct her history suggests that she does not like her hometown. One day on her way home she is followed by two boys in Central Park. She never tells it to Henry and Estelle, because "Estelle would write it home and the next thing you knew it would be all over Easton that she'd been raped" (77). This shows that Silvia dislikes the small space of the country where a rumor is exaggerated and spread soon and that it is one of the reasons for her leaving Easton.
However, she feels a strong hatred for New York: "anonymity, its virtuous terror; and the squeaking drainpipe, all-night light, ceaseless footfall, subway corridor, numbered door (3C)" (77). The whole city is a machine working without intermission, and she is just a subtle gear which is hardly noticed whether it exists or not. The huge organization makes her lose sight of her role and the meaning of her existence. Silvia cannot locate her coordinates in a large space of the city. She is drowning in the sea of anonymity or signs of figures.
She happens to listen to a rumor that a Mr. Revercomb buys dreams (which we usually have at night) and begins to sell her dreams. Though she wonders what she can do by payments of dreams at first, her life gradually becomes dissolute. One day Estelle calls on Silvia, who has been living alone. She is very thin, and trash is scattered on the floor of the room. She has been fired and has sold a lot of things, her watch, coat, bag, and so on. Moreover, she makes a living by selling her dreams. Silvia answers to Estelle insisting that marriage will change her life;
I want to be loved; who the hell doesn't? But
even if I was willing to compromise, where is the
man I'm going to marry? . . . And anyway, this
[New York] is no place to fall in love; this is
where you ought to come when you want to get over
being in love (84).
Silvia has spent a solitary life in New York, having no friends and lover. Many persons live in the city. They ask for the emotional connections, but it is hard to obtain them. Therefore she comes to regard the city as space not including liberty and various possibilities but making her feel a distance between herself and others, and thinks that New York is the place where one easily becomes lonely. She will not get accustomed to the city life, where she cannot be close to others and it intensifies her loneliness. Silvia is one of Capote's characters who cannot find their own places.
After Estelle leaves, Silvia takes a piece of sugar as her grandmother would do to remedy bad temper and listens to a melody from the music box which her brother gave her. This reminds her of her family: her "intimate place." According to Tuan, "Intimate places are places of nurture where our fundamental needs are heeded and cared for without fuss." She yearns a little for the hometown where she was loved at least by her family, not alone and uneasy. Home is an intimate place for anyone. But it is not until they leave there that most people will find how important home is. In other words, those who enjoy the benefit of home are not aware of its existence; home is significant for those who are out of home.
Silvia, who continues to sell dreams confesses, "I feel as though everything were being taken from me, as though some thief were stealing me down to the bone. . . . I haven't an ambition, and there used to be so much" (86). As Feud analyses, dreams show the restrained real world and fulfill impossible wishes. Oreilly, who has used up his dreams, explains to her that "dreams are the mind of the soul and the secret truth about us" (87). Selling dreams means selling parts of her world, or herself.
At last she decides that she would go home if she could have back her dreams. "And that is a terrible decision, for it would mean giving up most of my other dreams" (91), she adds. She has been living in the city, expecting dreams will come true. Accompanied by Oreilly, she goes to Mr. Revercomb, but she cannot find her dreams back because he tells her he has used them up. On her way home she is followed by two boys again. "Truly I am not afraid, she thought . . . and any way, there was nothing to steal" (91).
Silvia is not able to gain place and to stabilize her identity in the city. When she goes out one day, she watches Christmas decorations in store windows. They are "all to Silvia's distress, for she hated holidays, those times when one is most alone" (80). On holidays there are many families and couples who look happy and cheerful, who intensifies her sense of aloneness. Since she is under such conditions, selling her dreams makes her feel that there is a place where she is needed and gives her a kind of conformity. But these feelings do not gradually become useful to Silvia, who loses her ambitions and identity in proportion as she sells her dreams. Though Silvia tries to go home for the intimate place at last, she is too concerned with the city to get out of it. It may be said that she is one of the victims of the city.
What does Master Misery stand for? Oreilly explains to Silvia,
All mothers tell their kids about him: he lives in
hollows of trees, he comes down chimneys late at
night, he lurks in graveyards and you can hear his
step in the attic. The sonofabitch, he is a thief
and a threat. (83)
He is an incarnation of fear which everyone has in his or her mind. When a child is listening to a story at a home of an intimate place, with father or mother holding him or her, the child can feel warm and relieved all the stronger because fear is amplified. The fear implanted in his or her childhood sometimes appears. Silvia remembers it because she is away from her parents and home and nobody protects her. Obsessed by the fear sprung from solitude and anonymity in the city, she acts according to that fear, only to have to accept the tragedy. "All our acts are acts of fear" (68), Capote writes in "Shut a Final Door."
From another point of view, it may be said that Master Misery is the city itself. The city devours dreams. While people lose one dream after another, they are attracted to the city. Especially, it fascinates the young living in the country who have dreams and hopes, most of which will be crushed. What makes them go to the metropolis? Tuan comments,
The lack of opportunity in the economic sphere and
of freedom in the social sphere made the world of
the isolated rural settlement seem narrow and
limited. Young people abandoned it for the jobs,
the freedom, and--figuratively speaking--the open
spaces of the city.
However, only a handful of them can gain what they want. Most of them have no choice but to content themselves with the life which the city offers to them and lose their dreams one by one. Perhaps Silvia did never dream that she would be an ordinary typist and make no friends in the open space. She is swallowed up by the city and cannot find any means of escape. Master Misery as well as the city exhausts dreams which define our identity.
Silvia sees her city life in a mechanical Santa Clause and a plaster girl riding a bicycle in show windows.
In one window she saw a spectacle which made her
stop still. It was a life-sized, mechanical Santa
Clause; slapping his stomach, he rocked back and
forth in a frenzy of electrical mirth. (80)
She shudders at it, feeling he is evil. Santa Clause is essential to Christmas and has to be sacred. Though he must deliver dreams, even a bit of dream is not to be seen in a mechanized figure. A mechanical Santa Clause is equipped with no innocence and it is only a sign of Christmas sales at a store, that is, a capitalistic economy. Automation and the modern social system make her sick.
Silvia identifies the plaster girl with herself.
A plaster girl with intense glass eyes sat astride
a bicycle pedaling at the maddest pace; though its
wheel spokes spun hypnotically, the bicycle of
course never budged: all that effort and the poor
girl going nowhere. (85)
Whenever she attempts to do anything, she is not able to achieve one. In the frame of the mass society an individual is often neglected. The larger the society is, the lower the value of an individual is. Silvia understands fruitless attempts in the huge organization of the city, and feels not only the girl but also herself miserable. She dislikes the big mechanical city where the significance of individual existence is inquired but cannot escape from it, which shows what the city really is.
Chapter II
In New York City II
Vincent, the protagonist in "The Headless Hawk," also has no space. When he does not sleep, he often talks to a headless hawk painted in the canvas which he bought from a strange girl, D. J., drinking a glass of whiskey. He comments himself as "a poet who had never written poetry, a painter who had never painted, a lover who had never loved . . . in short, without direction, and quite headless" (49). He thinks of himself as nothing substantial and does not know where he should go. He is lonely; "it was Saturday, it was nine, there was nothing to do unless he did it [had a drink] alone, he was feeling sad for himself" (50). He leads a vacant urban life.
D. J. always talks about Mr. Destronelli; "Everybody knows him" (52), or "[H]e looks like you, like me, like most anybody" (53). She also remarks that he killed her acquaintance. She is obsessed by the imaginary man, and he is in the way of her mind going and coming between her self and the outer world. As she lives with Vincent, she gradually thinks him Mr. Destronelli.
Vincent is followed by D. J. He sees her near the gate of his house, or his gallery, or a restaurant, which distresses him. As she invades his place, he loses sight of place, that is, stability and safety.
This is my neighborhood, my street, the house with
the gateway is where I live. To remind himself of
this was necessary, inasmuch as he'd substituted
for a sense of reality a knowledge of time, and
place. (46)
He nearly loses his identity. "I am not him! Only me, Only me!" he screams (62). But D. J. knows who he is. She loses a sense of place and time, and following Vincent is the only way for her to keep identity.
This story opens with the cite from Job: "They are of those that rebel against the light. . ." (44). "They" are Vincent and his lovers including D. J., who were deserted and destroyed by him. Vincent "betrayed himself with talents unexploited, voyages never taken" (58). He does not attempt to seek for space and is buried with space of the city. The latter are those who have something broken and little capacity for society. They avoid the space in which the light gets and stay in their own place. The headless hawk also does not see the light because it is headless. Vincent has pursued the broken image of himself in his lovers, D. J. and the headless hawk. He tries to secure the comfortable place in them, but cannot do so. They can gain a temporary light by virtue of him, while Vincent gets to feel the light oppressive. Looking away from the light of his own life and of his lovers, he cannot specify the location of himself and does nothing but stray in the darkness.
In "Shut a Final Door," Walter comes to New Orleans and at a hotel he thinks of his life in New York. He does not know why he went to New York, but he can understand the words of his sister married to a man forty years older than she: "I just wanted to get out of the house" (64). He also wanted to go out and went to New York as a young man yearning for a city. His father works at an insurance office in Hartford, which is called "Insurance Capital" because it is the birthplace of the insurance business and in fact there are many insurance companies. It can be assumed that his father is so absorbed in his work that he neglects his home because there is cutthroat competition in the business. And his mother is churchly. Perhaps she makes a great effort for a church without taking care of her children. In short, his family has broken up, and his home cannot be "place."
In New York Walter is alone and lonesome at first, but he enlarges the circle of acquaintances through various people. He spreads space to gain fame, money and status, and lives in the place for which he pays a high rent, borrowing money from his girl friend. "Why, she wanted to know, didn't he move someplace cheaper? Well, he told her, it was better to have a good address" (64). An address functions as a sign of a person's status to a large extent. People tend to gather and settle in a particular area where those belonging to the same class live. We, especially men of high standing, are inclined to judge a person from his or her address. Walter is willing to become acquainted with the president of one company and the heiress of another company. He intends to show his rank better than what it is by associating with them.
These are the signs of his wish for space in the upper class. Although he gains the things and the space he has wanted, he is never satisfied. Tuan writes, "An aggressive ego endlessly demands more room in which to move." Walter has such an aggressive ego, which does not care about offending others that he cannot find that "for the aggressive individual, the contentment that goes with the feeling of spaciousness is a mirage that recedes as one acquires more space." So he goes too far, only to makes many enemies and to be deserted by those concerned with him. Because Walter is absorbed in getting more space, he does not establish his place. It may be one of the reasons for his failure in trying to spread space, without any foundation supporting him.
While Walter is thinking that he will go on a trip for vacation to forget the failure in New York, a delicious remembrance of Saratoga occurs to him. He failed to find place in the present, so he looks for one in the past which has easiness and familiarity. Then the phone rings. A voice he has never heard comes from the receiver and says, "Oh, you know me, Walter. You've known me a long time" (72). In the train bound for Saratoga he has the dream suggesting that he will be deserted by his father. At Saratoga the phone rings and the same voice says the same words. Feeling uneasy and crying, he asks a clubfooted woman to hold him and goes to sleep. As William L. Nance points out, it is explicit by Walter's actions after leaving New York that he tries to search for his father and mother. In other words, he unconsciously wishes for the place called home filled with comfort and love. Then he reaches New Orleans in great pain, where the phone rings again.
What is this strange phone call? It is Walter's fear and anxiety of having no place. Though he is gaining the space promising him fame and fortune, he finally becomes aware of being unloved and having no place which gives him security and stability. These feelings suddenly spring in him when his New York life ends in failure, and the voice of fear drives him into a corner. He cannot find out the place which stabilizes his identity and gives love to him. Walter does not know he wants to go home subconsciously, and therefore he cannot tell that the strange phone call is derived from his fear of loneliness.
For him what is the city, what is New York? For not only him but also the most young people it is the space which is filled with various possibilities and dreams. Though his positive acts bring him chances for success, he wastes them because of his too self-centered character. It follows from what has been said that Walter makes a great distance between himself and others and it is the space which makes him feel the sense of alienation. He goes to "New Orleans he'd chosen for no special reason, except that it was a town of strangers, and a long way off" (75). Judging from the reason, he is afraid of New York because it is full of his enemies from his viewpoint. The opportunities to obtain home are lying ahead of him, but Walter never notices them because of his aggressive ego urging him toward infinite space.
In "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Holly Golightly looks "between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday" (233). She goes out in the evening to go to a party with a lot of boy friends and returns in the next morning. It is a card of the mail box that represents her character best; Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling. Like other Capote's protagonists, she is a wanderer. Her parents died in her childhood, so a nasty family took care of her and her little brother. When they ran away, they met Doc Golightly, who is a horse doctor in the country. He fell in love with the fourteen-year-old girl and married her (of course not legally). She led a comfortable life, with his children borne by his dead ex-wife doing all the housework and buying many magazines for her, but she left home. Holly explains to the narrator, ". . . it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear" (263). In the country she lived as if she were a bird in a cage, so she went to the city seeking for space, freedom.
In Los Angels Holly met a Hollywood actor's agent, who was interested in her and prepared a screen test for her. However, she came to New York the day before the test. Holly, who is different from Miss Bobbit in "Children on Their Birthday" or Middy in "Jug of Silver," does not want to be a movie star at all. She says to the narrator;
I knew damn well I'd never be a movie star. It's
too hard; and if you're intelligent, it's too
embarrassing. My complexes aren't inferior enough:
being a movie star and having a big fat ego are
supposed to go hand-in-hand; actually it's
essential not to have any ego at all. (246)
Though becoming a movie star is a goal, a place in space for Miss Bobbit and Middy, it means a confined place for Holly. "Not to have any ego at all" is not to have any space. She denies the absolute value of a screen star.
Episodes about animals show us her characters. Holly has a nameless cat. "We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I" (246). She longs for freedom and wants to have a distance between her and others. When she gives the narrator a beautiful bird cage as a Christmas present, she says, "Promise you'll never put a living thing in it" (256). Or, she advises the bartender at her familiar bar, ". . . you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree" (263). We see her attitude of not getting too close to others for fear that they leave. Holly lives freely without any restraints, though she has no stability, or place.
Her life, however, changes by living with Jose, who is a Brazilian. She seldom goes out and begins to do housework. She remarks, "Actually, except for Doc, if you want to count Doc, Jose is my first non-rat romance" (267). Though it seems that she has got place, she is involved in a scandal before their departure for Brazil and Jose returns there alone. She intends to go to Brazil in spite of this situation, not because she likes to go after him but because she has never been there. Holly replies to the narrator who says, ". . . you'll never be able to come home," "Anyway, home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking" (277). Nothing is more appropriate phrase to express her way of life than this. Holly is destined to stray, seeking for home, or place.
On her way to the airport Holly disposes the nameless cat that she has, but after a while she tries to search for it hysterically. "We did belong to each other. He is mine" (280). The narrator promises to find the cat and take care of it. "But what about me?" She whispered, "I'm very scared" (280). Holly is scared of a strange space which she must face. It is not until she is about to leave New York that she comes to know her unstable situation. She loses her evidence of living in New York, the cat, and nobody supports her though the cat will be looked after, which makes her feel the sense of anxiety caused by no place. Thus she sets off in order to reach a place where she is at home.
About ten years later the narrator is shown the pictures in which there is a wood sculpture similar to Holly and knows she may be in Africa. On the other hand, he found the cat in the window of a room. At the end of the story he, thinking the cat got place, says, "African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too" (281).
As many critics say, Holly possesses the same characteristics as much other Capote's protagonists': the maturity of Miss Bobbit, the rather strange act of D. J., and so on. She, who left the country craving space of the city, strays in New York, longing for place. She has a lot of acquaintances, but has no real friends because she is apt not to become too intimate with others. Holly, as well as other protagonists, is lonely and struggles in the city. The desire for home makes her go to Brazil, then to Africa, but freedom is also her concern. As she never knows one cannot have two opposite things, home and freedom, place and space, she is wandering forever.
In this point, Holly is the typical person of Capote's fiction. She came to New York from the country Tulip, Texas, dreaming that she would get her place. In the big city she behaves as if she were a born urbane person, but it seems that she is "trying desperately to lose sight of her terror and loneliness among the bright lights and the nightclub crowds of New York." And in fact New York City gives fleeting solace to her. She has an attachment to the city, but it cannot be her home as long as she longs for both space and place.
Compared with other Capote's works, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" exposes the brighter side of the city. There are many names of the well-known places: Bergdorf, Hamburg Heaven, Charles & Co., Rockefeller Plaza, Chinatown, Central Park, Fifth Avenue, of course Tiffany's. These compose of New York City in the story and make the work sophisticated. "'Breakfast at Tiffany's' is a gay and spirited portrait of the city during the war years," says Joan Zlotonick. Capote depicts the city without its dark side and the war atmosphere. Before leaving New York Holly comments, "I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it" (268). Holly, who is not able to find her place in the city, has an attachment to New York and feels a sense of unity between herself and the city. New York which does not offer the permanent home but inspires his or her spirit is described in a favorable light.
In "A Day's Work" there is little description of New York City, but we can see the inside of the city through the private rooms of the city dwellers. A private room is an enclosed space where one can be protected from all the conceivable dangers and relax without being tensed up. He or she also exposes his or her self inside it, not caring about others' eyes. So the private room manifests more clearly the owner's character, especially the inner one which others seldom see, than his or her clothes or belongings that assert himself or herself.
Capote follows his cleaning woman, Mary Sanchez, and observes three rooms. First, they go into a pilot's room. "Really, it looks as though a burglar had been plundering there," comments Capote (647). His sheet is stained with mayonnaise, chocolate, crumbs, chewing gum, cigarette butts, and lipstick. There are hundreds of miniature vodka bottles here and there. Though the owner plays a part as a pilot in society, but he drinks too much and lives an untidy life in his private room. The private room gives privacy. Tuan writes:
Privacy encourages a habit of introspection that
can lead to the uncovering of hidden self.
Awareness of the self and its motivations is a
distinctive achievement of bourgeois culture.
However, the achievement is not one that
necessarily promotes happiness; indeed, it is
likely to have the opposite effect.
No one can think more slowly and carefully than a man of the present age. This is because working hours have been reduced and one has his or her own room. In other words, there is much time for him or her to be alone, especially in the metropolis composed of many strangers. The speculation of the pilot forgetting a good life leads him to the worse situation.
Secondly, they enter the room of a young woman in her mid-twenties who is an editor of a magazine. It is so clean and tidy that Mary does not have much to work. One time its owner had an abortion and was sick. Mary asked why she did not marry the man. "[S]he didn't know who the dad was. And anyway, the last thing she wanted was a husband or a baby"(649). She is similar to Holly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Both of them associate with many boyfriends not only to ignore her fear and loneliness but also to look for "place" in which they can feel safe and sound. The young woman, however, does not want a family; she dislikes being placed under restraint of family and wants to be free. Hunt for two opposite things, liberty and safety, results in an abortion.
Next, they visit a room of a Jewish old couple, which are made of mahogany. There is expensive furniture and the refrigerator is full of fattening goodies. These suggest that two living there are well off and that the Jew belong to upper class in American society. Capote and Mary eat ice-cream without leave and dance to the music from the radio. Scolded by the residents who return home, they criticize that they are "stuffy." Capote makes the cynical remark on the Jews, who are said to pull the strings of American economy, being earnest, serious and boring. He criticizes part of the rich for making a false dream in the city.
Today there are as many rooms as people. Rooms in which they retreat have personalities. Capote succeeds in making the city dwellers emerge through their own private rooms. He also enjoys the gaps between their faces in society and those in their rooms; a pilot and an alcoholic, a career woman and a lonely woman. New York as a center of the world economics asks the white-collar to behave like the elite. Thus a room must be "home" to enable those exhausted to relax and feel at ease with their family, but for ones living alone it is space to force them to reaffirm their aloneness. Nothing is more fearful than the dark space which comes into view when they return home and open the door. Nevertheless, they are living in the city, craving for the illusion of the city.
Since Mary as a cleaning lady works in various rooms, she knows various persons, various lives from the untidy to the rich. It can be said that she is one of the best persons to know about the city people. On her way home, she prays on behalf of her acquaintances in the church. The emotion compelling her to pray for a lot of people stands for the modern city.
"Mr. Jones" shows symbolization of a person in the city. The narrator "I" lives in a rooming house in Brooklyn. Mr. Jones, who lives next to "my" room, is blind and crippled, and never goes out. One day, however, he disappears, leaving all his belongings in his room. Ten years later, "I" see Mr. Jones in a subway in Moscow. "I" am just about to speak to him, "Mr. Jones, on a pair of fine sturdy legs, stood up and strode out of the car. Swiftly, the train door closed behind him" (709).
It is not so rare that in the city we never talk with our neighbors and know little about them. The narrator judges Mr. Jones blind and crippled from "gold-rimmed glasses with pitch-black lenses" (708) and crutches. He imagines that the man is a good listener, "a cross between a priest and therapist" (709), because he has one visitor after another and his telephone rings constantly. They are not false information, but when ordinary people decode the data they will reach the same conclusion that the narrator reaches.
In a society people are given roles to play. They need to perform their parts well in order to be recognized. Each person has each sign and behaves according to its signifie which the society requires of its signifiant. However, there are some who, like the pilot and the career woman in "A Day's Work," carry out their social parts but cannot afford to consider themselves. In "Mr. Jones" the man makes use of the signifiant of the blind and creates a different self. His success is due to the large city where the dwellers hardly pay attention to others. In the impersonal urban life, a person is just a sign, or cannot help becoming one.
Chapter III
In the Southern Country Town
The setting of "Jug of Silver" is a Southern country town. This is one of the main factors in the text. A master of a drugstore, Mr. Marshall, puts a jug filled with silver coins in the store and plans to present it to one who makes a good guess at the full amount of the coins. "It was surprising, really like a miracle, how Wachata County took to the jug" (34). Both children and adults are crazy about the guess. Generally speaking, there are so few amusements in the country that a slight one can attract townspeople. As, aside from physical space, human space is very small, it becomes the talk of the whole town and all of them enjoy talking about it. Capote makes a good use of the characteristic of the country to build up the background of the story.
In this story, several factors of folklore are adopted. The protagonist has a single name, and the name of Appleseed, a seed of a forbidden fruit which gives wisdom, expresses his character well. He is a wise boy with a strange power. There is a riddle of counting coins. He struggles a trial, the unusual severe winter. The answer is seventy-seven dollars and thirty-five cents (the number of seven or three is favorable for folklore). These motifs of folklore provide "Jug of Silver" with a kind of mysterious, enigmatic atmosphere. Hamurabi, who is Mr. Marshall's friend, suggests the name of an ancient king and Valhalla, the drugstore, is taken from Teutonic myths. These names increase that effect. In spite of many motifs of folklore, however, this story does not completely become modern folklore; Middy, who wants to become a movie star, will never appear on the screen.
The jug of silver as denotation is a wine jug full of nickels and dimes. It has various connotations. For Mr. Marshall and Hamurabi it is a method of attracting many customers. For village people it is more than a game or a lot. Hamurabi says, "Now you look at those nickels and dimes and what do you think: ah, so much! No, no. You think: ah, how much? And that's profound question, indeed" (34). The jug provides them with the pleasure of imagination: how much is it and if the money is gained what will it be spent for? For Appleseed and Middy it is a little aim which they must obtain in order to realize their big dream. So the drugstore with the jug forms the place as center of value in this story.
Though this is just a child's story if the main theme is Appleseed's miracle, we should notice this point; Middy does not become a movie star. For Middy's desire his family probably moves to a city where there are more possibilities that one will be able to become a movie actor or actress than in the country. Different from Walter or Silvia, who longs for the obscure space of the city, Appleseed and Middy try to obtain a place in space from the beginning because their goal is clear. We can see the children's strength and liveliness drawn out of their wish. What do they want by Middy's becoming a star? Appleseed says, "They [actresses] make lotsa money, the ladies in the picture shows do, and then we ain't gonna never eat another collard green as long as we live" (38). They wish to earn much money and stop living in poverty. In short, the place they aim to reach is a utopia of which people dream when they are suffering from very hard times. As a utopia is found nowhere, Appleseed and Middy cannot go there.
It can be said, from what we have seen, that one of the themes is a sign of the narrator's initiation. The narrator, who is a school boy, observes the event without any feelings and emotions. The observation in some distance makes him understand a certain truth behind Appleseed's miracle.
Hamurabi once typed up an account and mailed it
around to various magazines. It was never
printed. One editor wrote back and said that "If
the little girl really turned out to be a movie
star, then there might be something to your
story." But that's not what happened, so why
should you lie? (43)
The grown-up narrator recognizes the cold, hard world in which dreams end dreams even if a miracle happens to be done. He does not hope that Middy becomes what she wanted to be, and takes the Christmas story as a mere fact. Observing it calmly, he knows that Appleseed and Middy are straying for a utopia better than any other townsperson who was crazy for the jug of silver.
The setting of "Children on Their Birthdays" is also the Southern country. Capote depicts the characteristics of the country in this story. The road on which buses pass is not paved. "It was the summer that never rained; rusted dryness coated everything; sometimes when a car passed on the road, raised dust would hang in the still air an hour or more" (92). As Lee Zacharias points out, this suggests timelessness in the small town. Miss Bobbit as arms of the clock makes time go by. The circle of acquaintance in the country is shown by the birthday party at which most children in the town gather for one child. It is small but connection with others is strong.
The main stage in this story is the street, and a spotlight is directed on to the porch at the house which Miss Bobbit and her mother board. The curtain rises at the time when Miss Bobbit appears in the street. Preacher Star and Billy Bob wrestle, play Tarzan, do bicycle tricks, and play the buffoon on the stage in order to attract the attention of her in the porch. Not only the boys but also the girls in the town come to see her. It is in the spotlight that the two boys fight for her (though she calmly pours water on them). At the last scene she comes running from the porch to the street and is run over by the bus. Thus, the street is the very meaningful place. The streets play an important part in communities. Tuan writes, "Attachment to the streets--to the public arena where friends and relatives gather--is strong, especially among teenagers." The acts of the children on the street show what the streets are in the country. The smaller a community is, the higher the public nature of the streets is. Children play and adults chat, so the streets become part of everyday life. This makes a characteristic of the country explicit.
What is the country town for Miss Bobbit? Her following words give the answer:
Now, as a matter of fact, I have called in the
Devil just recently. He is the only one who can
help me get out of this town. Not that I live
here, not exactly. I think always about somewhere
else, somewhere else where everything is dancing,
like people dancing in the streets, and everything
is pretty, like children on their birthdays (99).
Miss Bobbit as well as Middy in "Jug of Silver" has a goal, and considers the town to be a moorage. It is plain that her destination, "somewhere else where everything is dancing," is Hollywood. Though she seems to have called the Devil to proceed there, he helps her go to the place where he thinks everything is dancing: the world of death. It is a kind of irony that the bus which ought to take her to another space runs over her and leads her to another world. She knows the place where she wants to go in space, but she is not able to get there, either.
Miss Bobbit has a passion for Hollywood. One day she participates in the contest promoted by Manny Fox, the winner of which will be given a Hollywood screen test. All the spectators are enchanted by her performance and she gets the first prize. But as soon as she knows it is fraud, she makes the police arrest Manny Fox by sending letters to Sheriffs and newspapers throughout the South. She suggests to some young men who were swindled out of money by him that they invest the returned money in her going to Hollywood (though nobody does). Miss Bobbit punishes the fraud for having soiled her dream and appeals the young men in the town to share the dream. What is Hollywood, which captivates her strongly?
Hollywood is a dreamland not only for Miss Bobbit but also for us. It has led the whole cinema world and has produced one of the most popular entertainments in America. There are gorgeous and gay dreams. Behind the screens, however, the struggle for existence is so keen that those who aim to win the survival game often use underhanded methods. Sometimes a great amount of money may move because of a part to play.
Miss Bobbit has never seen the real world behind the dream. Garson comments, "Since she is only a child when she dies, she does not undergo the disillusionment that adulthood brings." Though she seems to adapt herself to reality better than anyone else in the town, in fact she is living in the dream. "Children on Their Birthdays" reminds us of the days when children can remain children or dreams can remain pure and unspoiled.
There are several similar points between "Jug of Silver" and "Children on Their Birthdays." Needless to say, the setting is a country town in the South. Either protagonist is a child having a strange power, and attracts the townspeople. At last Appleseed and Miss Bobbit become the town's legend. Their dream does not come true. It is with the atmosphere of the country town that their existence is reinforced.
"A Christmas Memory" is written on Capote's childhood. It has the warmest atmosphere in his works. The story begins the following paragraph:
Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of
winter morning more than twenty years ago.
Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a
country town. A great black stove is its main
feature; but there is also a big round table and a
fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front
of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its
seasonal roar.
This situation appeals to not only the city dwellers who come from the country town but also those who lives in the city since their births. Nothing is more pleasant than a fireplace in the cold weather. Family members often gather in front of it and have a good time. A round table gives us a softer impression than a square one. A glance at a rocking chair makes us comfortable and relaxed. We imagine what dish is made in a great stove. Such a room reminds us of a typical cozy place in a country town.
Buddy, the narrator, tells of a homemade Christmas. He has no friend but his cousin, who is an old woman. She is looking forward to Christmas and begins to make a fruit cake for Christmas with him buoyantly and cheerfully. They save money for it and buy many kinds of ingredients. The cake takes four days to bake. Then they prepare a Christmas tree, which is cut from the woods, and decorate it. On Christmas day they exchange presents; handmade kites.
It is rare that Christmas events are prepared for many days in a home. Lately we make do with a ready-made cake, tree and present. Passions of the old woman and Buddy for Christmas are soft but strong, which recalls our childhood innocence. Friendship between them without caring about their age supports the backbone of the work. The environment of the country town is fresh, but there is something familiar to us. These factors make the story emotional and sentimental.
Buddy is sent to a military school the next year. He has a new house. He writes, "But it doesn't count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go." Home must be a place with a person or persons indispensable to us. However great the faculties may be, or however kind the people may be, a space cannot be home without the right people. Tuan comments, "In the absence of the right people, things and places are quickly drained of meaning so that their lastingness is an irritation rather than a comfort." Home without his friend is no longer home for Buddy. The affection of Buddy, or Capote for home forms the foundation of the story.
"A Christmas Memory," Reed says, "can be read as a moving expression of lost childhood innocence and idyllic simplicity." This story is written on Capote's childhood. Buddy is Capote, and the old woman is Miss Sook. In 1956 when the work was published, he lived in New York. We can easily assume that the busy city life lacking in humanity reminded him of a sweet memory.
"The Thanksgiving Visitor," which is based on Capote's memory in the Southern country town like "A Christmas Memory," gives us a different impression. The years of this story are clear: from 1932 to 1934 during the Depression. "[S]ome boys, girls too, were forced to go barefoot right through the bitterest weather." "[T]hroughout the Depression years, our school distributed free milk and sandwiches to all children whose families were too poor to provide them with a lunch box." Odd Henderson, who was bullying Buddy, lived a shabby house: "With a tin roof and the wind right in the room and not a scrap of fire in the fireplace." Different from other Southern stories, "The Thanksgiving Visitor" offers hard life.
Judging from the details, "A Christmas Memory" is based on the event in 1934. The life written in the story is a little poor, but not miserable. The life close to nature that intellectuals in America an age ago recommended is depicted. In "The Thanksgiving Visitor" there is a life in Alabama hit by the Depression. It is owing to Miss Sook that Buddy's home was a comfortable place in such hard times. Her kindness is reinforced all the more for the descriptions of the Depression.
This story centers on Miss Sook's character. "Innocence, preserved by the absence of experience that had always isolated Miss Sook, left her incapable of encompassing an evil so complete." After returning from Odd Henderson's, she says, "The shame I feel is for all of us who have anything extra when other people have nothing." She is an adult equipped with a child's mind; she is quite innocence and considerate. What she says and what she does are fresh to us, the people in the modern society.
Like other Capote's characters, Miss Sook is different from ordinary people. An enclosed space has a great effect on her. She has no friend but Buddy and her sphere of activity is narrow. She is under the same condition as Mrs. Miller's in "Miriam," but the Southern landscape forms Miss Sook's nature. It keeps her pure. It is true that not all country persons are innocent. On the contrary, most of the adults lose innocence to some extent. However, we hope that pastoral landscapes do people in the country good. Those in the city believe the myth of pastoral landscapes; it makes people what they should be. Miss Sook reminds us of humanity we have almost lost as we become adults. She says to Buddy, who planed to humiliate Odd Henderson, "Now listen to me, Buddy: there is only one unpardonable sin--deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven. That, never. Do you understand me, Buddy?"
Chapter IV
In Enclosed Space
In "A Tree of Night" the protagonist Kay, who attended the funeral of her uncle she had never seen, gets on a train bound for Atlanta. She finds an empty seat in an alcove at the end of the car and seats herself there. The opposite seat is occupied by a woman and a man. This is the setting of the story. A train is a closed space and an alcove makes space. While in a bus they sit in the direction of movement, in an alcove of a train they sit face to face as if they are forced to talk with each other. The woman succeeding in making Kay talk with her says, "That's what I like about a train. Bus people are a close-mouthed buncha dopes. But a train's the place for putting your cards on the table. . ." (24). If a family or a group of friends occupies the separate space in a train, it becomes a comfortable one. In case passengers in the space are strangers each other, there are two responses; one begins to chat with others in order to kill time or drown his or her loneliness, and another reads a book or a magazine so that others cannot talk to him or her. Of course, there is a person who has a one-way conversation with others. No other place has more various meanings than the space of alcoves in a train. Kay's space is invaded by a mean woman who is short with a huge head and a man who is deaf. They earn their living by performing the show in which he revives after buried alive. Kay's world is quite different from theirs.
The woman forces Kay to drink a cheap gin and the man touches her cheek softly. Kay finds a similarity between the man and her uncle; the man's face has a tone of death. When they press her to buy a love charm which seems to be a peach seed, she goes to the front of the observation platform. It is obvious that she is afraid; she says aloud, "We're in Alabama now, I think, and tomorrow we'll be in Atlanta and I'm nineteen and I'll be twenty in August and I'm a sophomore. . ." (30). She tries to restore her identity which is lost because of fear by making sure where she is and who she is. In the darkness, which makes her see nothing but the endless wall of trees and the frosty moon, the uncertainty of the location breaks her reality and leads her to the dreamy world. Suddenly she feels an impulse to touch the lamp. A lamp is the image of a warm home. Kay longs for her home which offers safety. Seeing the man who has come without her noticing it, she realizes what the fear is; it is implanted by adults in her childhood. They told the tales of a wizard man:
[S]tay close to the house, child, else a wizard
man'll snatch and eat you alive! He lived
everywhere, the wizard man, and everywhere was
danger. At night, in bed, hear him tapping at the
window? Listen! (30)
Adults tell children threatening tales in order that children will obey them. They are also told by their parents. This is how fear of demons, omens and wizards which we cannot completely forget are planted in our mind. Tuan comments, "They [Adults] sense hostility in both the physical and the human environment and feel that an education in fear prepares the children to submit, adapt, and live." Fear given by their own convenience often arises when the children grow up. The process of recalling the fear in a closed space is conspicuous and artistic in this story. Capote clarifies what fear is by exposing "the grotesque both in the external world and in the semiconscious mind or the young heroine."
Let us see the inside of the train;
Gloomy dead smoke sailed the air; and the car's
heated closeness accentuated the stale odor of
discarded sandwiches, apple cores and orange hulls:
this garbage, including Lily cups, soda-pop bottles
and mangled newspapers, littered the long aisle.
(22)
This suggests the slums in the city. The dilapidated coach of the train as a modern convenience seems to be a stain of the modern city where civilization has progressed. The filthy streets offer disagreeableness not only to sight but also smell. It is said that this is partly the reason why a crime rate in the slums is higher than any other region. The environment has such a great effect that Kay is swallowed up by the unique atmosphere. In the observation platform she feels familiar with the scene before it frightens her. Kay, who is accustomed to the artificial, yearns for nature unconsciously. But the threat of nature in the darkness makes her retreat to the decadent civilization.
Kay having intellect and reason is overawed by the odd couple having emotion and simpleness. Perhaps this means the defeat of modern civilization. People learned to create by means of intellect and to order a system of value by reason. And they have built a city as a complex of intellect and reason. The pursuit of convenience and efficiency, however, caused bad effects and it is the slums that originated from the dark side of such a city. In the coach suggesting the slums, Kay, who is sophisticated and cultured, catches a glimpse of another world that she has never seen, "finally relaxing into that sublunary sleep for which no identity is requisite." Emotion dominates intellect or reason in "A Tree of Night," which leads to loss of identity.
In "A Diamond Guitar" the setting is a prison. Mr. Schaeffer, who killed a trivial man and was sentenced to ninety-nine years, is old and respected, but has no friends. The appearance of a newcomer makes Schaeffer have a dream for a while. He is Tico Feo, a Cuban sailor, with a guitar decorated by jewels. When he is introduced to Schaeffer, his smile attracts the old man. "Until that moment he had not been lonesome. Now, recognizing his loneliness, he felt alive" (108). It reminds him of the outer world.
A prison is a unique space separated from all societies. Prisoners are watched day and night and their freedom is restricted. They are taught and forced to control the egoistic and aggressive self which drives them to crime. Some serve faithfully and others hide their claws until they return to the world. Schaeffer, however, restrains his feelings so that he may not remember aloneness, fear of death, and yearning for the outside world. Since he has to spend the rest of his life in the prison, he cannot help thinking of it as home. It is the place where he can safely eat and sleep but there is no love. Though home without love may not be home, the prison provides Schaeffer with the minimum requirements with which he lives. That is why for him the prison is home without love, that is to say, the inevitable real world without a bit of dream.
Contrary to him, Tico is strongly attracted to the outside world. The most precious treasure in his belongings is a map of the world. Tico often shows Schaeffer the places where he has ever been and he wants to go. He tells him stories about a racetrack, hundreds of dollars and a widow woman, which turn to be lies later. Do these dreams take him out of prison? No. He believes that what he wants to do must be real, not dreams. Thus, for Tico the outside world is the real world and the prison is a bad dream.
Schaeffer "sometimes looked defensively at his friend and thought, 'You are just a lazy dreamer'" (110). But in fact he himself is a dreamer. One day Tico persuades him to escape. Schaeffer answers, "I'm too old" (112). However, he begins to wonder if he can run with the young man and imagine himself to be on the sea. After a while a prisoner dies, and hearing the noise of making a coffin, Schaeffer comes to think that is for him. He is afraid of old age and death.
One day after they finish lunch, they run into the woods. Schaeffer trips on the log in the creek and falls. Tico returns, but leaves him there and flees alone. The kind Captain of the prison says Schaeffer attempts to capture Tico. In the night Schaeffer touches the guitar which Tico left and feels the world.
Many forests in which the convicts work stand between the town and the prison. They work under the guards' watching, while they can directly feel nature they do not see inside the walls. The forests are at once part of the outer world and part of the prison; they are the halfway between a dreamland or a nightmare and the actual world. For Tico the life of the prison is a nightmare; for Schaeffer the enclosed space is a real life and the outer world is a dreamland. He is happy in the forests and feels attachment to nature. Since the forests are part of his life, it is natural that he never escapes from them. The forests wake Tico and Schaeffer from dream and lead them to each world.
Schaeffer dreams a sweet but bitter dream. It is a temporary dream, which revives his energy. It is a pity that he feels alive only when he has a dream. "A Diamond Guitar" is the story that a man in an enclosed space takes a glance at an open space and longs for it. Its center is the protagonist's volatile mind.
"Among the paths to Eden," whose setting is New York, does not show crowds and streets in the metropolis. This is because the place of the story is limited to a suburban cemetery.
The cemetery was not a reposeful, pretty place;
was, in fact, a damned frightening one: acres of
fog-colored stone spilled across a sparsely
grassed and shadeless plateau. An unhindered view
of Manhattan's skyline provided the location with
beauty of a stage-prop sort--it loomed beyond the
grave like a steep headstone honoring these quiet
folk, its used-up and very former citizens. . . .
(127)
A cemetery is a place where people pay their respects for the dead. So it has a unique atmosphere to prevent them except for those concerned from visiting the place. Ordinary people, who are afraid of the dead as we see in a thriller that revival of the dead is stereotyped, are not willing to approach a cemetery. The sign of a cemetery is a group of tombstones or headstones. Manhattan's skyline has the imagery of a headstone: buildings are fog-colored and lifeless. The big city as well as the cemetery accepts only the specific people and drives others entering the space into a state of tension. Though they are equipped with a kind of beauty from the viewpoint of design, they are inorganic, inanimate, and cold. In this story the city life is discolored, too.
In the special enclosed place, Mr. Belli and Miss O'Meaghan regard each other as a mere sign. Mr. Belli, a tax accountant, visits his late wife for the first time after she has been buried. It is Miss O'Meaghan who speaks to him there. When she asks him about the slab,
"My wife," he said, and sighed as though some
such noise was obligatory.
She sighed, too; a curious sigh that implied
gratification. (128)
This implies his state of mind beginning to forget the sorrow for his wife's death and a certain aim of Miss O'Meaghan.
When he sees her, he remembers his secretary, Miss Jackson; she seems "imbued with that quality of good-will he appreciated in his secretary" (129) and both of them look about the same age. After he chats with her for a while, eating the peanuts she gives to him, he suspects that she is a husband stalker. At last she asks him, "Have you considered marrying again?" He, thinking "he would ask Esther [Jackson] to dinner," answers, "No, I've never considered it. Marring again" (135). She confesses that she is looking for a husband, according to her aunt's advice that many widows missing home life and wishing to marry again are walking in the cemetery. When a new pilgrim attracts her interest, he wishes her good luck.
In the view of time, a cemetery is a space where time stops and the past and the present are combined. The dead do not grow any older, and the living remember the past when one whose name is inscribed on the gravestone was alive. In the space Miss O'Meaghan seeks for her future: a happy life through marriage, Eden. But it is natural that she never finds it in the cemetery which ties the present to the past. Though at first Mr. Belli goes there to remember his past, or the life with his late wife, he notices his new future course to get along well with his secretary through the conversation with Miss O'Meaghan. Mr. Belli and Miss O'Meaghan turn their eyes not to the time the cemetery shows to them, but to each future in which they wish they are happy. Thus the nature of time which the cemetery has is neglected in the story. Carson remarks,
Capote's most ironic use of the theme appears in
the discovery of love in a cemetery. Eden as
everlasting life, a paradise of eternal youth, is
the path Belli seeks among the quiet graves.
Miss O'Meaghan, who is told that she has to get married, cannot find a partner in ordinary life because she cares about a disability on her left leg. She is so afraid of the outer space, or the city space of Manhattan where the futures may lie, that she cannot dive into the space. Thus, the range of her activity is restricted within the calm-looking place. Though like other Capote's heroine she also has difficulty in gaining her "place," a tragic sense is not included in "Among the Paths to Eden." Miss O'Meaghan is equipped with "stick-to-itiveness" to have a go at one man after another. Capote mainly depicts in earlier works the frailty of the human heart which breaks down because of failing to secure his or her place in space. In this story, he attempts to show more human nature and the sense of reality by describing not only Miss O'Meaghan's struggling but her positive attitude to pursue a "place." "Among the Paths to Eden" may very fairly be said to give a new direction to later works.
In "A Lamp in a Window" the narrator "I" gets lost on his way home from a wedding ceremony in Connecticut. After he walks on the country road at night, a light from a cottage comes into his view. He sees an old woman and many cats in a window. The stranger is warmly welcomed and treated, to stay at her house that night. In the following day she opens a big freezer when he says he likes cats, too. There are dozens of frozen cats in it.
The old woman is fearful of space. She lives in the next place; "I walked for half an hour without sighting a habitation. Then, just off the road, I saw a small frame cottage with a porch and a window lighted by a lamp" (711). A house in wide space reminds us of opposition, light/dark, warm/cold, open/close. There is no pastoral image which most of the countries have. The empty dark space causes a person a sense of uneasiness and caution, which produces fear. She is living in the country which arises her fear of space, while the cottage in such a place gives her security and relief.
Next let us consider the fact that the old woman preserves cats in the freezer. Where does the passion for preservation come from? Tuan comments, "The passion for preservation arises out of the need for tangible objects that can support a sense of identity." She projects her identity, in other words, her history and way of life, upon dozens of cats with which she had lived. So those cats establish what she was and support her present identity. We are seeking for ambivalence of stability and change. We go to "space" for change and to "place" for stability. The odd old woman preserving cats refuses to change and wants to steady herself. That is to say, she sticks to "place."
It can be said that her experience with the cats makes the lonely cottage a comfortable place and that she cannot part with them in order to keep that experience. An experience is generally transitory, not eternal; its worth is transient, too. We tend to keep anything connected with an experiment so as not to spoil its value. For example, we take pictures and buy souvenirs when travelling. The old woman aims to maintain her experience by laying the dead cats aside. This also means that her negative attitude toward death. We can have a glimpse of the sorrow of the lonely old woman who freezes cats to death and is hunting for eternity no one gets.
This is the last scene of this story:
"All my old friends. Gone to rest. It's just
that I couldn't bear to lose them. Completely."
She laughed, and said: "I guess you think I'm a
bit dotty."
A bit dotty. Yes, a bit dotty, I thought. .
. . But radiant: a lamp in a window. (712)
She is quite different from Mrs. Miller in "Miriam" in kind. In the last sentence it can be seen that the old woman keeps lighting a candle of life though she lives a lonely life in the solitary cottage even without a telephone. Capote expresses a human tenacity and attachment to life by comparing her manner to a lamp.
However, there is the fear of space which has driven her into the situation behind the radiant old woman. As she is in an isolated house, she must be aware of not only openness of the country but also a sense of security in her cottage. So if she does not keep the dead cats that have become a part of the place through the experience, the center of value in the place will waver and she will lose sight of herself. One of the themes in this story is her solitary living that forces her into keeping cats in a freezer in order to support her identity.
We can also observe human nature in an enclosed space. Though her behavior seems to be odd and lacking in common sense, no animal but human being keeps a carcass unless it is preserved for food. It is only the human being that leaves a dead thing so that it may be a mental support. This work shows a nature peculiar to a human being by focusing an act in the special space. This vivid feeling is depicted all the better for the motif often used in folklore or a fairy tale: a man reaches a solitary cottage after he loses his way.
Chapter V
Place and Space
Characters Capote describes are victims of the city. Mrs. Miller in "Miriam" and Silvia in "Master Misery" are obviously affected by the cold indifferent city and their identities are collapsing. Their common point is "loneliness." Loneliness is the most unbearable feeling once we begin to care, because of which Mrs. Miller comes to possess the divided self and Silvia starts to sell her dreams. Both enhance the sense of loneliness on the streets by watching the pedestrians. New York City undermines them. Capote describes an invisible destructive force of the city in the two stories, though in "Master Misery" it is embodied and visible as Mr. Revercomb who collects others' dreams.
The closeness of the crowded city is also shown. The city is open enough to accept those who come there, but some secure only a physically or mentally closed space in which they live on. As Mrs. Miller does not know the openness of the city, she shuts her acts in a cage of everyday life and stays in her place. Silvia, having left the hometown which seems to be closed, leads a commonplace life and her range of activity is limited within it. She feels sorrow and misery all the more because she recognizes the openness of the city but cannot obtain it. In "Among the Paths to Eden" Miss O'Meaghan cannot find a marriage partner anywhere but in the cemetery where widowers walk around because she minds about a handicap on her leg. Sometimes a handicapped person may be too conscious of part of his or her own body, but it is true that the crowd in the streets, shops or restaurants bring about his or her fear. Miss O'Meaghan herself restricts her sphere of activity, too. Thus the city, directly or indirectly, confines some dwellers in closed spaces. Kenneth T. Reed comments:
The New York Stories are those in which a cold,
impersonal, and uncongenial environment seems to
foster characters who are, in the main, the
victims of loneliness, alienation, and despair.
As a consequence, their behavior not infrequently
hovers somewhere between the engagingly eccentric
and the certifiably deranged.
The stories in New York focus on lonely, solitary and vanquished persons. The young come into the placeless space only to lose themselves, and the old fall into the bottomless hole called loneliness or vanity.
The city has a great influence on the protagonists in Capote's New York stories. Blanche H. Gelfant writes about the functions of a city in the city novels:
[T]he city becomes a key actor in a human drama.
It participates in the action as a physical place,
which makes a distinctive impression upon the mind
and senses; as an atmosphere, which affects the
emotions; and as a total way of life--a set of
values and manners and a frame of mind--which
molds character and destiny.
New York as a physical place is filled with skyscrapers, symbols of technology and civilization, but has the slums which is the negative side of modern society. Some people are encouraged and sophisticated by a splendid atmosphere, while others are caught and spoiled by an uneasy restless atmosphere. The city's way of life forces most dwellers to lead a routine life and implants the same sense of values in their mind. Only those selected are familiar with the utterly unique way of life and make a success. In Capote's fiction these factors are mixed with the characters' experiences and decide to take their tragic courses.
The splendid lively side of the city peeps out of Capote's stories. There are several protagonists who employ opportunities in the city. In "Shut a Final Door" Walter utilizes a line of personal contacts to procure money, fame and status. He is able to do so because people concentrate in the big city and successful persons are near at hand, and it may be said that its environment aspires his desire. Holly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," who makes a lot of men pay for dinner and the taxi fare, lives in New York City without working. She searches for love in the city where a lot of men try to attract her attention as long as she dresses up. Walter and Holly direct their attentions to one aspect of the city and make the most of the crowded city space.
In "Breakfast at Tiffany's" people enjoy parties without the bondage of the society during the war. There is a parade on Fifth Avenue, where "[t]he flags in the wind, the thump of military bands and military feet, seemed to have nothing to do with war"(253). Park Avenue in "A Day's Work" functions as a place to prompt memories. It reminds Capote of Willa Cather and J. F. Kennedy. He also writes about the episode in which he came across Greta Garbo in a sketch story, "New York." The city gives those selected the key which leads them to success.
Capote describes New York in the opening of the sketch:
It is a myth, the city, the rooms and windows, the
stream-spitting streets; for anyone, everyone a
different myth, an idol-head with traffic-light
eyes winking a tender green, a cynical red. (291)
We can see the two sides, light and dark, of the city and a variety of life in the city. They are based on Capote's works. The good effects of the city bring about its reality and increase its own nature. His sharp observation is well reflected on them and he creates some myths in the city.
Capote comments in "Self-Portrait":
I am a city fellow. I like pavement. The sound
of my shoes on pavement; stuffed windows; all-
night restaurants; sirens in the night--sinister
but alive; book and record shops that, on impulse,
you can visit at midnight. (632)
He likes to see and hear the city on the pavement, especially at night. Since in the city streets are paved and many buildings stand along them, the smell of soil is never conveyed by the wind. Instead, artificial smells such as exhaust gas and perfumes hang in the stale air. When we walk on the pavement, we hear various sounds--exhaust notes, horns, mechanical noises, sirens, music from shops, chats, and clamors. In the daytime pavements are filled with the crowd, and in the night the city is illuminated by stripes of cars' headlights, colorful neon signs and bright lights through windows of all-night shops, which draw strollers as a streetlight draws moths. The city runs as if it is an organism without ceasing its action, and its motive power gushes out of the city dwellers. They make up the city: its smells, its noises and its landscapes, that is to say, modern civilization. It may be said that Capote is interested in not only the modern city but also people living there.
But he does not have a liking for all the cities. We can see from the above quotation why Capote loves New York and dislikes Los Angels. The former is the society of people, whereas the latter is that of cars. Los Angels has developed as the number of cars has increased. Those living there use cars wherever they go. Supermarkets, shopping malls, even high schools are equipped with large parking lots. There are few pavements where many people are supposed to be seen. Here pavements are streets, not sidewalks. New York has a long history and has functioned as a main city in America since the days without car. It is crowded with buildings, and shops for walkers stand in a row along the pavements. Basically, New York is the city centering on people. Capote likes the city partly because on the pavement he can see a lot of diverse people and glance at part of their daily lives.
There are many works written by various authors in which New York is used for subject matters. Capote's works have two unique characteristics. First, his early stories such as "Miriam," "Master Misery," and "Shut a Final Door" are gothic, supernatural, or surrealistic. New York which he saw in his youth was a dreamland filled with both good and bad dreams. The city was so large and so coercive for the young person who came from the Southern country town that it could not give a concrete form to him. To depict the city and those living there, Capote employed dreamlike, fantastic motifs. Consequently, New York in his stories was powerful and fearful.
Second, "A Day's Work" and "Mr. Jones" in Music For Chameleons are based on facts. The former was printed in 1979 and the latter was in 1980. (The early stories were printed in the latter of 1940s.) At that time New York was closer to most people than before because of the development of radio, television, and transportation. They roughly knew the city and its problems and they were able to deduce what the city was from the fragments of facts they had known through various media. Capote learned to see New York as it were by living there and comparing other big cities. Thus, he wrote the works based on the facts.
Next, let us consider several stories set in the Southern country towns. They are quite different from the New York stories. The stories are written by a narrator of the first person and show the calm state of the town and townspeople. The intimate relationship is often seen. The protagonists are children. These elements make the atmosphere of the Southern stories heartwarming.
A characteristic of the country town is manifested in the following words of the narrator in "Jug of Silver": "Small towns are best for spending Christmas, I think. They catch the mood quicker and change and come alive under spell" (37). Townspeople, preparing for the biggest event in a year in union, create and raise the mood gradually. In the city people cannot afford to do so because they are driven by something, such as money and time, and city-dwellers, who are unwilling to mix with their neighbors, do not feel like doing something together. Capote describes the streets in the city before Christmas:
The streets are strung with garlands, . . . at
corners sweating woolly men rustle bells under the
shade of prefabricated trees; carols, hurled from
lamppost loudspeakers, pour their syrup on the
air, and tinsel, twinkling in twenty-four-karat
sunshine, hangs everywhere like swamp moss.
(305-6)
As department stores and supermarkets intending to promote a Christmas sales war inspire the mood in the city, a capitalistic economy takes the lead in Christmas. In the country everyone that enjoys it from the bottom of his or her heart is able to become the main character of a Christmas story.
While Capote says he likes the city, he looks at the small country town favorably. Basically, the Americans yearn for a small town life. Richard Lingeman writes, "Even if the small town has been absorbed by a mass society, . . . we Americans still cling to the small-town myth." Most of the small towns have become part of large cities or bedroom towns by means of cars, planes, television and radio. According to James M. McCutcheon, today over eighty percent of Americans are city-dwellers. The small town has been urbanized. Nevertheless, they are enchanted by the small town myth; people spend quiet days without being pressed by time and keep in close touch with others. Those who came from the country to the city keep their hometown in their mind. Lingeman states, "Grown men and women secretly harbor a nostalgia for their home place, even though they once thought it suffocating and conformist and lacking in opportunity." It is not until they go out of the space that they realize they do not feel lonely in the enclosed space of the country because of meddlesome persons.
It is peculiarity of Capote's stories that the small town lies in the South. As we can see from American history, the South, which has had a calm rural way of life and close bonds among people, was and is different from New York. Raymond D. Gastil says, "Among American regions the South has been noted for its hospitality and friendliness, and also for its relatively relaxed and unhurried way of life." In Music for Chameleons Capote writes "Hospitality," in which a family in the Southern country town welcome expected or unexpected guests. A missionary talks about cannibalism and a man they entertained turns out to be an atrocious prison-breaker and a lady deserted by her husband marries a widower through an idea that the family hits on. It is based on Capote's childhood memories and he depicts the meetings caused by the Southern hospitality humorously and warmingly. Since "A Christmas Memory" and "The Thanksgiving Visitor" are autobiographical short stories in relaxed atmosphere of the South, they succeed in showing bittersweet feelings most people must have experienced at least once.
The Southern stories have both the small town myth and the good old South. The South which Capote portrays is a pleasant and comfortable place. In fact there is a lot of problems peculiar to the South; the race problem which arose from slavery, the slower economic development than other regions, drugs from Central America and South America, and so on. Capote does not touch these dark aspects. Living in New York, he observes merits and demerits of the city and writes about them. Judging from the distorted city life, it is clear that there are more demerits than merits in the space. They are diseases of the modern American society which eat at people's mind. This is partly because space, life and values in the city change moment by moment. On one hand Capote is interested in these changes, on the other hand he looks back at the past which has molded him. Tuan comments, "[W]henever a person (young or old) feels that the world is changing too rapidly, his characteristic response is to evoke an idealized and stable past." As Capote observes the changeable situation of the city which affected him as much as ordinary people, he probably needs to review the unchangeable properties of the South so as to stable his system of value. Consequently, the Southern country town must be opposite to New York City. It has what the city has lost, and for Capote it must be an innocent place. Thus, the Southern country town of his is the place most city dwellers feel attracted to.
Capote creates two characters who want to become movie stars in "Jug of Silver" and "Children on Their Birthday." In the former story, Appleseed obtains the jug of silver to support Middy's dream. He expects much money of Middy if her dream comes true. In the latter, Miss Bobbit aims to play a principal part which attracts everyone's attention. She longs for mental satisfaction rather than money. (Though she earns money by being a subscription agent of major magazines, it is only a means, not an end.) The destination of Appleseed, Middy, and Miss Bobbit is Hollywood. Holly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," however, discards an opportunity to take a screen test in Hollywood because she does not want to become a movie star. Why do Capote's children show different attitudes toward becoming one? What does Capote think of Hollywood--"that vivid geographical symbol of American movies?"
He writes a travel sketch "Hollywood" in Local Color. While a young Negro girl with hope and expectation who comes for the first time are in a taxi, she "should find only a dumping ground for all that is most exploitedly American: oil pumps . . . , avenues of used-car lots, supermarkets, motels, . . . publicity" (304). These are typical of American society, especially American car culture; things on the roads are so showy and garish that people can see them in a distance. Landscapes from a car do not differ from one city to another. Hollywood, the city of dreams, is similar to another city that devours dreams and has unsightly landscapes.
The author visits a famous lady with his friend, and her little girl entertains them before she comes down. The girl tells them the price of furniture. When Capote's friend asks her what flower she likes, she answers orchids, adding that her mother says "they are the most expensive" (305). Of course, this episode is just part of Capote's observations in Hollywood, but it reveals the rich people's distorted sense of value. As he looks without emotion at the girl who judges the value of things only by price, the grotesque of the rich is more manifest and even fearful.
Capote comments Hollywood is the last place that is suitable for Christmas and comes to the conclusion that this is because Hollywood is the city without children. There are the following sentences to help our understanding of the children in that city:
A teacher here recently gave a vocabulary test in
which she asked her students to provide the
antonym of youth. Over half the class answered
death. (306)
The students think that one is as good as dead if he or she is not young, which is peculiar to Hollywood. They think as if they were old: the rest of life is short. Ordinary young people do not answer "death" to the question because they must spend a long life. The episode tells us that Hollywood, the city reeling with lust and money, has change the young's way of thinking.
Hollywood gives Capote an impression that the appearance of the dreamland is an ordinary city landscape, but its essence is idiosyncratic, far from that of a dreamland everyone believes, and that children living there are different from common ones. This is the reason why Middy and Miss Bobbit are not able to reach the movie city. Appleseed and Middy are innocent children. Though Miss Bobbit is adult-like and pragmatic, she is only a child, too. Perhaps Capote cannot make their dream come true in the childless space giving the chill and wants to keep them innocent. As people grow older, most of them have less dreams and innocence in the restricted adult world. Capote describes extreme prototype people of the modern morbid society. Capote as well as we, however, hopes that children, especially in the country, are innocent. Therefore he makes his children keep dreaming and avoid Hollywood, the American city which manifests the evil influence of capitalism. Capote says, "It isn't even a city. It's nothing. It's like a jumble of huts in a jungle somewhere." Now we can understand Holly, a grown-up girl, does not have a dream of Hollywood.
As we have seen in the previous chapters, many settings of Capote's stories are enclosed spaces: a room, a house, a train, a prison, and a cemetery. Mrs. Miller in "Miriam" and Mrs. Kelly in "A Lamp in a Window" shut themselves up in their rooms in fear of change. They are widows and live alone. It is likely that their rooms were comfortable places when their husbands were alive. After their death the rooms lose value, and the two old women are unwilling to find other places where they are at ease. Mrs. Miller lives in the empty space and Mrs. Kelly tries to maintain the stability of the space by having many cats. They are the extreme examples living in enclosed space; the former unconsciously longing for open space falls into schizophrenia and the latter stays there even doing a horrifying deed.
The setting of "Miriam" is New York, and that of "A Lamp in a Window" is Connecticut. Winter is severe in both regions. Their rooms are the places which protect them from the cold and offer a sense of safety. The characteristic of closed space makes fear of outer open space clear.
In "A Tree of Night," fear of closed space is most reflected. In "A Diamond Guitar" and "Among the Paths to Eden" the protagonists try to go out of enclosed space. They yearn for openness and freedom of the outer world. It is pathos that they fail to escape from enclosed space after all. Not only does Capote describe fear of closed space, but also uses its opposite nature and makes a story humorous by the setting of a cemetery. Since he knows the space better than anyone else, he is able to watch from various viewpoint and increase types of stories.
What does closed space mean for Capote? When he was a child he would be locked in a hotel room by his parents, which caused his great fear. He was afraid that they would desert him. "I remember practically all of my childhood as being lived in a state of constant tension and fear," he recalls. This experience must have made him understand alienation and loneliness in enclosed space and the fear is represented in his stories. Capote was confined in a room, which deprived him of freedom and caused him a lot of distress. He longed for space more than others and so his characters often dream of it. In space, however, some of them wander in search of "place."
Conclusion
Capote describes the city from different points of view. In his early stories, we can see the vague but strong power of the city. Young people who become disguised with the small space of the country long for the open space of the city and go into it. However, they fail to gain freedom, possibilities, and "place." They cannot find a place which conforts and relieves them, which causes a tragedy. Those living in the city have to keep up with its fast pace of life. Naturally, they lead a routine life. Their hidden selves ask for changes and there is a conflict in their minds. Capote shows psychological pressure from the environment of the city, and it is amplified by supernatural and surrealistic factors.
In "Breakfast at Tiffany's" the protagonist is not able to get place in New York. The New York she experiences is different from one in earlier stories. She leads a flamboyant life, going parties and having a good time with the rich, the well-known, or persons of high position. Material prosperity, however, does not give her mental contentment.
Capote turns his eyes to an obscure corner of the city: a cemetery. Cemeteries as well as parks are a few spaces which are covered with greens, not concrete. They take on a different nature in the city. Only in a cemetery a character takes a positive attitude in search of "place," and in her action we see an oppressive atmosphere of the city; streets, buildings, and the crowd.
He attempts to decipher residents by description of their rooms. Outside the rooms most of them form their character according to the society, but inside the rooms they have to face their weak selves. There is no privacy in the city and the country, though there is a subtle difference in nuance between them. In the country it is hard to guard privacy because of the small world. In the city people feel lonely in spite of no privacy.
Capote focuses on various aspects of the city. The cold impersonal city produces the lonely crowd. However, he never criticizes such a city. He even enjoys the city life; the accidental nature of his neighbor being a spy and the human nature composed of two (or more) different selves. His works point out not only fear of the city space but also its humorous aspects.
In Southern stories we see the small space of the country town. Their atmosphere comes from the small town myth and the good old South and reminds us of close personal ties, hospitality, and the relaxed and unhurried life, which city dwellers have lost.
In "Jug of Silver" and "Children on Their Birthdays" the main characters' activities in the small towns are like American dreams. The children also long for space, possibilities of becoming a movie star, but in vain. They never reach the movie city, Hollywood. It suggests that innocence of childhood is spoiled by the world of adulthood filled with money and desires.
Autobiographical stories display the comfortable and heartwarming life more vividly than the above two stories. Friendship between a child and his elder cousin enhances coziness in the country life and denies inconvenience and alienation. The Southern country town is a "home," a comfortable place. As the stories are forms of recollection, however, now the home is not to be seen.
Most Capote's works are based on closed space. We observe a sense of oppression in enclosed space and struggles to escape from it. The protagonists look for freedom and travel in "space." This is not limited to a room, a train, a prison, a cemetery; the city and the country are enclosed space. Some go into another world, and others stray in their inner selves. We are bound by the social structure and environment and not free to act. Once we are caught in a complex net of a society, we cannot get out of it easily. Sometimes we are indulged in dreams, enjoying the false freedom, because we are not free in this world. Capote makes such effects of space clear by focusing on characteristics of various spaces.