Breakfast at Tiffany's: Holly as the Outsider concluded

After finishing Breakfast at Tiffany's my belief in its relation to The Great Gatsby was further concreted. Holly and Gatsby have many connections: their rise from lower class to a form of upper class status, their wild parties full of strange individuals, their confiding friend (for Gatsby it is Nick Carraway and for Holly it is the unnamed narrator). In the second half of the novella, I was introduced to another connection: an older man from Holly's past. The older man is Doc Golightly, "A person in his early fifties with a hard, weathered face, gray forlorn eyes" (Capote 61). Doc Golightly is Holly's possible husband (she was only fourteen when they married) and he is the only thing that connects her to her lower class past. For Gatsby, this man is his father Mr. Gatz. Mr. Gatz is old and decrepit, and he carries a last name and a few pieces of memorabilia that connect Gatsby to his past as the lower class Jay Gatz. Both of these old men have unconditional love for Holly and Gatsby respectively, but once Holly and Gatsby attain their upper class status they break themselves away from the people who truly care about them.