What Makes a Character Memorable? Look No Further than Truman Capote’s Fiction
“A wiry little girl in a starched, lemon-colored party dress, she sassed along with a grownup mince, one hand on her hip, the other supporting a spinsterish umbrella.” In this line, Truman Capote gives us his initial portrait of the character of ten-year-old Miss Bobbit in his story, “Children on their Birthdays.” The line sets a precedent for the paradoxical imagery and subsequent actions belonging to Miss Bobbit: her portrayal contains both child-like and adult attributes. “Lemon-colored party dress” and “sassed” denotes the look and behavior of a child, while the details accompanying the latter part of the sentence, “one hand on her hip” and “spinsterish umbrella” signal the opposite. Capote’s juxtaposition of contrasting details contributes to the paradoxical nature of Miss Bobbit, capturing her essence at certain key junctures, when she is facing obstacles that define her character. Through these details her personal history and motivations are revealed, and by the story’s resolution, her physical depiction has altered to match the outcome of her character arc.
Yet another facet Capote observes about Miss Bobbit in the first scene and notes repeatedly for the rest of the story is her stare. This creates a third dimension to her character, a masculine one, in the language Capote uses: “…what is more, she…
