| Truman Capote, the little man from Alabama, has left an important mark onAmerican literary culture. His writing ability and his wild personality captured theinterest of people all over the world. Despite all the controversy, no one will ignorethis tiny, child-voiced man of a mega-writer. He is an alcoholic, a drug addict,homosexual, and a genius. To best experience Capote the stylist, one must go back tohis short stories, which are semi-autobiographical based on his nightmarish andlonely childhood, widely opening readers’ eyes with the eccentric, dark and gothicexperiences in Deep South. It is those short stories casted by magic that amuse, moveand awaken people’s inner soul with its painfully beautiful and musical language tune.Every time he creates his novels, he reminisces his processes of coming-of-age andmaturation and makes a deal with ‘Satan’, whether to accept his homosexuality orcommemorate his forever-lost innocence in A Christmas Memory. Most of all,Capote-like protagonists can be found in his short stories and they are one and theother Capote. They are both the innocence of the very young and the cunning of thedemented adult in the context of real setting between the rural Alabama and NewYork City and the illusionary one in characters’ dream vision. It is a world depictedin pair that is comic and sinister, innocent and corrupt, good and evil, at the sametime, people with love and failure of love, living their lives between daylight and nocturnal, reality and fantasy, freedom and confinement. The short stories are aboutman and nature, internal and external manifestation of things.All in all, the focus of this thesis is to offer an interpretation of Capote’s shortstories in the perspective of the dichotomy that sets against each other. Thedichotomy of character, setting and theme are analyzed in detail. Truman capote’sworks as a prodigy offer insight into the dichotomy in his world of unconsciousconsciousness that can be impossibly pretty and incredibly sorrowful. |
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