A Critical Analysis of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory_Part 2

By Febri Iffan

The narrator uses 1st point of view because the story can be founded a word “I, me, myself”. Moreover, it is limited and selective omniscient because the narrator never mentions the feeling of the others such as their relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Haha, and the people whom they met before. He just mentioned more about himself, the woman, and Queenie. The narrator is Truman Capote himself. Moreover, the writer of the story is himself as well.

The story is narrated well. He narrated it like a flashback because it actually happens in the past. This choice had made because it is his real past experience. I think, the main reason why he tells the story is to show that the Christmas event is his last Christmas with his lovely friend. On the other hand, the narrator has shown his motivation of being 1st point of view in the story, and the motivation is to remember his beautiful experience with his best friend. In fact, it is overlooked by mentioning “the last Christmas with her.” Of course, if the story is telling in another narrative angle, it will be different. People will think that it is someone’s experience, not Truman’s experience. On the contrary, there is no peculiarity of the narrator. He lived just like a normal child at the time.

Theme

The theme is “Christmas is happiness” because the story is about the happiness of Christmas. The old woman and the boy endured many cruel things just for making a nice Christmas. They struggled for a awesome win in the Christmas day. Moreover, everything is good in Christmas, people get happy and they give a present to each other.

Other theme is “friendship” because the whole story shows a nice relationship between the old woman and the boy. They do almost everything together and they often spend their time together. Moreover, to show that they are a best friend, the old woman called the boy as “Buddy” because Buddy had been her best friend before he died. In fact, there is a sentence like this “we are each other’s best friend.” It is a strong proves which is showing the friendship between both of them.
Another theme is “love”, this love doesn’t mean that they are falling in love with each other, but they have a love to each other and it lets them had a nice relation at the time. Moreover, with love they could share many things with other people.

Tone and style

In style context, the narrator uses present tense. Why he doesn’t use past tense, whereas it is about his past experience. This style he uses because he is using 1st point of view. If he uses past tense in 1st point of view, it will be a little bit weird. Moreover, he doesn’t want to be objective narrator. On the other hand, there is a dramatically style and film script writing style. There are some example of dramatic sentences such as “other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them.” Another sentence is in past form such as “to tell the truth, our only really profitable enterprise was the Fun and Freak Museum we conducted in a back-yard woodshed two summers ago.” The two sentences are looked dramatic because they are looked as the narrator reveals the bitter reality. On the other hand, there are some sentences of film script writing such as “enter: two relatives. Very angry. Potent with eyes that scold, tongues that scald.” And “home: Queenie slumps by the fire and sleeps till tomorrow, snoring loud as a human.” Those sentences are very helpful because they help us to imagine the situation more easily. The last thing that I found, that the narrator has good education because his writing is well.

The attitude (tone) which shown by the characters are different. First, the old woman, she is friendly, nice, wise, tough, and weak (in case of feeling) because she is very kind to the boy, she has some hard jobs, and she will cry when someone scolds her. Second, the boy, he is friendly, nice, tough, strong (in case of feeling) because he has a hard life and jobs, he has to help the old woman to do many things, and he calms down the old woman when she cried. The boy and the old woman, they have a good attitude because they had endured many cruel situations and they had to survive in their hard life. They never complain about their life, why they have to live like that? What they did was just enduring it with spending their time with doing many jobs and having a lot of fun.

Conclusion

Truman is a good writer and he also a good man because he could survive at the time when there was an economic crisis. He could use a nice style of writing because he is educated well. After a long journey, he learns how to find the happiness with someone special for him. I’m sure that his memory about his last Christmas will help him to be wiser.

Well, Christmas can present different moods to each person. Someone loves it, someone hates it, someone doesn’t know about it, someone thinks it is important, someone thinks it is fun, etc. However, it is different for Truman. His Christmas is the best experience which he ever has. He learns how to survive, he learns how to share happiness, he learns keep calm, etc. He got many lessons at his last Christmas with his best friend.

How about us? What is Christmas in our mind? Nobody knows about it, but I’m sure that Christmas is a nice moment which has been waited by  many people around the world because it represents happiness. As Truman in the story, he had waited the morning of the Christmas with  great enthusiasm . He annoyed everybody, but they couldn’t be mad at him because of Christmas day. Everyone shares they happiness to others and it is the Christmas spirit.

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