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Summary

After the narrator has a story accepted for publication in a small journal and excitedly tells Holly, he and Holly have a celebratory day out in the park. They avoid the zoo because Holly doesn’t like seeing animals kept confined, and when the narrator shows Holly the bird cage he wants, she replies “But still, it’s a cage.” At Holly’s instigation, they steal Halloween masks from the store. 

Soon after, the narrator gets a nine-to-five job and begins to see less of Holly. She spends more time with Rusty, Mag, and José. Holly and Mag throw a party on Christmas Eve where Holly and the narrator exchange gifts. Holly gives the narrator the antique bird cage, making him promise never to put a living thing in it. The narrator gives Holly a St. Christopher medal from Tiffany’s. The narrator tries to kiss Holly, but she rejects him.

Holly, Rusty, Mag, and José go on a trip, but when Rusty and Mag are hospitalized (Mag with severe sunburn and Rusty with injuries inflicted by some sailors), Holly and José continue on without them. After the trip, Mag believes that Holly and José slept together during their travels alone. To defuse the situation, Holly claims to be a lesbian. Holly later relates all these details to the narrator, then tells him she got O.J. Berman to read the narrator’s recently-published story. Berman was impressed, but he didn’t think the narrator should be writing about Black people and children. Holly says that she agrees, infuriating the narrator—enough so that he has to resist the impulse to hit her. When she senses his anger, the conversation takes a bitter turn that causes a rift in the relationship. The narrator tries to give the bird cage back to Holly, but he retrieves it when Holly puts it out with the trash.

Holly and the narrator avoid each other for a while, until one day the narrator notices an older man examining Holly’s mail box. The man follows the narrator to a diner, where they eventually start talking. The man is Doc Golightly, a farmer and large-animal veterinarian from Texas, who pulls a picture from his wallet and points out himself, younger versions of Holly and Fred, and children older than Holly. Saying he came to bring “Lulamae” home, Doc explains that Holly’s given name is Lulamae Barnes and that he married her after his children’s mother died. One of his children had found Holly and Fred stealing food from his farm, and he took them in. He and Holly got married when she was fourteen, but she later ran away. The narrator takes Doc to Holly, who embraces him affectionately, though she does not return to Texas with him. After Doc leaves town, Holly reminisces about her past with the narrator and Joe at the bar, and they toast to Doc.

One day, the narrator sees a newspaper headline announcing Rusty’s engagement to Mag. He returns home and hears a commotion coming from Holly’s apartment. He follows José and a doctor in to see that Holly has wrecked her apartment in an emotional breakdown. After the doctor gives her something to help her sleep, the narrator learns from José that she is grieving because Fred has been killed in combat.

Analysis

The bird cage is developed as a symbol of Holly’s contradictory desires: she wants a life of luxury, but without the confining attachments that come with it. The narrator’s gift to Holly, a medal of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, further cements her identity as a traveler without a home. Years later, the narrator still has the bird cage – proof of the impact Holly has had on him, even if he no longer thinks of her often.

Read about the Bird Cage as a symbol in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

The question of Holly’s authenticity is once again brought up during the conversation that leads to the narrator and Holly’s falling out. Holly mentions lying about being a lesbian to get out of trouble with Mag, and the reader is left to wonder whether Holly is being truthful about not sleeping with José on the trip. Holly comes out of the fight with the narrator seeming superficial, with her insistence that the subject matter of the narrator’s story – Black people and children – is meaningless, and the narrator is left calling Holly an “utter fake.”

Read an in-depth character analysis of the Narrator.

When the narrator meets Doc, the narrator and reader alike finally get a peek behind Holly’s cosmopolitan façade and learn more about her background, including her rural origins and her marriage at fourteen years old. The reader understands her distaste for beautiful cages because, in a way, she came from a cage when she ran away from her life with Doc, a life in which she was taken care of but confined. The imagery connecting Holly with birds is highlighted by Doc’s descriptions of her and how he caught her a crow and taught it to say her name, a detail that also emphasizes the importance of names in the narrative. She associates herself with “wild things” longing for the sky, furthering her connection to birds and developing her desire for freedom. The reader also gets a glimpse at how long Holly has been yearning for a more cosmopolitan life, through Doc’s mention of Holly obsessively reading magazines with glamorous images inside.

Read about the motif of Birds in the novella.
Holly’s longstanding dream of a home for herself, however, is shattered when she gets the news that Fred has died overseas. If a crack appeared in her façade when the narrator learned about her past from Doc, it completely shatters when she learns that the person she cares for most is gone. From here on, Holly must pick up the pieces of her life and discover a new dream of home for herself.

Read more about the novella’s theme of Home as a theme.

Previous section Section 2: Holly leaves a gift basket – Mag moves in with Holly Next section Section 4: José moves into Holly’s apartment – End

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