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Although Breakfast at Tiffany’s is principally about Holly Golightly, the story is told in the first person by someone else, the unnamed narrator. This device allows Holly’s inner life, her past, and her ultimate fate to remain mysterious in a way that it could not if the story were told from her point of view. The use of a fallible first-person narrator, rather than an all-knowing third-person narrator, also directs the reader’s attention to how Holly is perceived by those around her, rather than to how she is inwardly. 

The narrator’s own feelings about Holly and limits on the information he knows about her color the reader’s perception of Holly, raising questions about how Holly might come across if the story were told from a different point of view. At the same time, the narrator’s own feelings are a sort of mirror of Holly’s. Like her, he yearns to be accepted and taken seriously. And like her yearning, his comes out in contradictory ways—sometimes as affection and generosity, but other times as self-centeredness.

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