33 pages • 1 hour read
Truman CapoteA Christmas Memory
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Point of View
“A Christmas Memory” is narrated from a distinct point of view, the complexity of which is due partly to the narrator being simultaneously an adult and a child; though most of the plot is set in Buddy’s childhood, it is the adult Buddy who narrates these memories. The effect is dramatic: The narration renders the experience and viewpoint of a child, but it does so with an adult’s eloquence and wisdom, and the matured consciousness holds knowledge of “future” events, imbuing the narrative with irony, foreshadowing, and at times a sense of fatedness. Moreover, because the narrative is explicitly a collection of memories, it is theoretically a past-tense chronicle—yet grammatically, the narration wanders between disparate verb tenses, showing a flexibility and dynamism in the adult narrator’s process of reflection. The predominant verb tense is the present, suggesting that while the narrator recounts past events, he has such a powerful emotional connection to those memories that he feels transported by them. Likewise, the narrator is aware of the reader and wants them, too, to feel transported; the story opens with the imperative to “[i]magine a morning in late November” (3), and the voice is immediately evident as that of a storyteller.
The point of view also shapes how the characters are portrayed. Because the story’s most direct experiential reality is that of a child, the reader experiences the Christmas season from a child’s perspective, which heightens the story’s vividness and sense of nostalgic wonder. More importantly, however, Buddy’s perspective involves the admiration and cherishing of his friend, a character who might be viewed negatively from a purely adult perspective. From the perspective of the other relatives, for example, Buddy’s friend is eccentric, an embarrassing figure that they either chastise or ignore. But from a lonely child’s point of view, Buddy’s friend is nurturing, kind, loving, generous, capable, and “fun.” Although Buddy describes her as “still a child” (4), he does not do so to diminish her; rather, his identification of her as “a child” signals the strength of their friendship and her difference from the other, distant adults in his life.
Juxtaposition
The author employs strong and direct contrasts (juxtapositions) throughout the story that encourage readers to re-evaluate initial assumptions. The first juxtaposition appears in the unexpected friendship of a seven-year-old boy with a “sixty-something” woman; however, the story reveals the strong foundation of this superficially strange friendship. The oppressive world of the household also juxtaposes with the welcoming natural world that seems to be the real domain of Buddy and his friend; Capote often juxtaposes the threadbare and “dilapidated” quality of the pair’s few possessions with the bounty of the rural environment (5). The story frequently contrasts the nurturing love of Buddy’s friend with the coldness of his other relatives, and the almost extravagant generosity of her 31 fruitcakes with the very reluctant charity of his other family members (7). One particularly salient juxtaposition is on Christmas morning, when the handmade kite that Buddy’s friend gifts him contrasts with the impersonal, “hand-me-down” presents from his other relatives. Finally, the story juxtaposes moments of happiness with reminders of loss, creating a tension and a sense that the friends’ happiness is fragile and temporary. For example, the narrator’s friend names him “Buddy” after a childhood friend who died (4). The juxtaposition of the pair’s kite-flying on Christmas morning with the narrator’s sudden pronouncement “[t]his is our last Christmas together” (27) creates an especially poignant sense of loss at the end of the narrative.
Figurative Language
Figurative language includes words that depart from their strictly literal meaning. Remarkably rich, detailed figurative language pervades the narrative, heightening the descriptive impact. The story abounds with colorful images, metaphors, and similes. Although the narrative recounts the first-hand experiences of a young child, the prose is vivid and sophisticated, as the narrator’s adult consciousness surveys these memories in the present tense. This complex perspective means that rather than limiting himself to a seven-year-old’s simplistic diction, the author can use figurative language to convey how an imaginative child experiences the world; Buddy’s sensory impressions are strong and immediate, and their description is immersive, as when he perceives the making of fruitcakes as a kind of dance: “Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke” (14). While an adult might perceive these activities as dull or commonplace, the figurative language conveys the deep pleasure and value that these Christmas rituals hold for a child.
Syntax
A notable feature of the prose style in “A Christmas Memory” is the syntax, or the way that words and phrases are arranged to produce levels of meaning within and between sentences. The story contains many long, winding, detailed sentences, particularly sentences listing (or cataloging) Buddy’s impressions; for example, Buddy describes the contents of a “trunk” of Christmas decorations: “a shoebox of ermine tails (off the opera cape of a curious lady who once rented a room in the house), coils of frazzled tinsel gone gold with age, one silver star, a brief rope of dilapidated, undoubtedly dangerous candy-like light bulbs” (21). These long sentences present a series of vivid images that recreate the immediacy of childhood impressions. The author typically employs such sentences in describing things that Buddy and his friend find pleasurable and satisfying: the natural world, cooking, gift-making, dancing. In contrast, short, blunt sentences typically describe moments of conflict or crisis, as when the pair’s festivities are interrupted by “two relatives. Very angry. Potent with eyes that scold” (16), or when Buddy simply states, “Life separates us” (27) to describe his devastating separation from his friend. These changes in sentence length and rhythm reflect shifts in mood and emotion.
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By Truman Capote
