In the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, characters drop in with their quirks quite evident but their backgrounds a mystery. The most important example has to be Holly Golightly herself, a whiplash of eccentricity and intrigue. To get to know who she is and who she was, the reader must pick up bits of information here and there, much like the narrator uses the contents of her garbage to gather some idea of her life. What is clear is that Holly is very interested in other people, an extremely social person, but does not wish to share her full story with anyone. She let loose facts with explanation, the present without the past. She’ll tell you about her brother named Fred, her visits to Sing-Sing, her love for Tiffany’s, but ask for information she doesn’t offer and she closes off. “Like many people for volunteering intimate information, anything that suggested a direct question, a pinning down, put her on guard,” narrator Fred observes. Her behavior seems typical of one who is determined to define herself on her own terms, someone who has chosen a new direction. This attitude isn’t unique to Holly; in fact, New York City seems to be the place for it. People seem to come here to be new or different in some way, and leave the parts of them behind that conflict with the New York person. It’s almost no surprise when we learn that Holly ran away to the city as a young child. What she ran from is still unknown, however perhaps her New York self reveals something about it. She is Holly Golightly, Traveling; she misses her brother, Fred, and fantasizes about Tiffany’s; she escorts older, wealthy men and befriends poor, struggling writers. Something must give her away eventually, but it won’t be Holly herself. She has fully committed to the Holly of the city. As O.J. Berman said about her, “She isn’t a phony because she’s a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can’t talk her out of it.”