Taleigha Davis
May 9, 2014
Honors English 12
2nd period
Breakfast with a Geisha at Tiffany’s
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden and Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote are two incredibly inspiring novels. Both were written based on women who overcame their difficult situations. Nitta Sayuri and Holly Golightly share several comparative and contrastive similarities. Whether it dealt with being taken away from home to be sold into slavery to a renowned geisha or escaping a non-wealthy childhood in a rural area of Louisiana. These women may not have overcome their issues in the best way but they eventually learned from their decisions in the end. Arthur Golden and Truman Capote have been affected by these two characters that they’ve created, which is why there’s a purpose that they wrote these novels.
In Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden illustrates about a nine year old blue-gray eyed Japanese girl who gets separated from her sister and is immediately sold into slavery to work for distinguished geishas. Nitta begins to learn the traditional art of being a geisha; hair, makeup, music and dance. This caused her to transform tremendously and rename herself Chiyo. She encountered an evil rival who envies her. The world of a geisha is all about having a supreme appearance, where the virtue of young girls are gambled to the highest auction-goer, where women are taught to beguile the most powerful men and where love is belittled as delusion. Being a geisha requires you to be a heartless individual. “I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon.” (A. Golden, Chapter 19)
Before Arthur wrote this novel, he was living in Japan and met a man whose mother was a geisha. He grew more intrigued about the topic and decided to research and write about it. Around this time he was interested in writing fictional as well. As Arthur began to write about this subject, he wrote it from his prospective, in third person, and misunderstood the whole concept of a geisha’s lifestyle. "I did it in third person twice, and really only went to first person when I realized that I wasn't going to get the book written that I really wanted to write, unless I made this kind of imaginative leap into the mind of the character." (cnn.com) One day, he finally he had the opportunity to meet an actual geisha, and redeem himself by tossing away the previous drafts he wrote, into a new and improved version that geisha can relate to and readers can be inspired.
In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote uses the narrator to introduce the protagonist, Holly Golightly. Holly appears to be the charming New Yorker who owns a nameless cat, although, she claims that she does not want to own anything or anyone, “He's all right! Aren't you, cat? Poor cat! Poor slob! Poor slob without a name! The way I see it I haven't got the right to give him one. We don't belong to each other. We just took up one day by the river. I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I'm not sure where that is but I know what it is like. It's like Tiffany's.” (T. Capote, film). She believes that nothing bad can ever happen to you when you’re at Tiffany’s, a luxurious jewelry store. Joe Bell later discovers an undercover secret about Holly’s background. And that her real name is Lulamae and she’s from Louisiana. She may be able to pursue you with her charisma but on the inside she’s just a naïve gold digger who tries to escape reality and live in this fantasy world where you are rich, happy, and free. Truman Capote based his novel from