Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is Holly’s name for a refuge she can visit and an ideal place she has not yet found: somewhere that quiets the “mean reds” and makes belonging feel possible. Its significance lies in the gap between the comfort of the store and her unsettled life; Tiffany’s offers immediate calm, while a home where she and her things belong together remains a future hope.

The Phrase as a Refuge

Holly explains that when the “mean reds” come, she has tried a drink, aspirin, and marijuana, but none works as well as getting into a taxi and going to Tiffany’s. What soothes her is not jewelry but the place’s quietness and “the proud look of it.” She trusts its suited staff and the familiar atmosphere, imagining that nothing very bad could happen there. The store thus becomes a practical answer to an otherwise hard-to-name distress: she can go there and feel calmer, even though it cannot resolve the circumstances that bring on the fear.

That relief is specific rather than simply material. Holly distinguishes her attraction to the store from an interest in wearing jewelry: she likes diamonds, but considers them unsuitable for younger women. What matters most about Tiffany’s is the ordered, reassuring environment she associates with it, not the possession of its luxury goods. Her phrase therefore names a feeling as much as a destination.

Belonging and the Unnamed Cat

The image of Tiffany’s grows out of Holly’s uncertainty about ownership and home. While holding the cat, she calls him an independent and says that neither belongs to the other. She does not want to give him a name before he belongs to someone, and she likewise does not want to own anything until she knows where she and her things belong together. Naming the cat would imply a settled bond she does not yet believe she can claim.

Holly can nevertheless recognize the quality of the place she seeks. When she says that a real-life place making her feel as Tiffany’s does would be reason to buy furniture and name the cat, the phrase becomes a measure of possible belonging. It joins a concrete domestic act—furnishing a home and naming an animal—to the quietness she currently finds only in a store.

An Unsettled Future

Holly briefly imagines that after the war, she and Fred might find such a life. She recalls having seen a place near the sea in Mexico and says Fred is good with horses, suggesting a possible future built around a particular location and shared work. But this remains a tentative vision, not an achieved home. The thought of Tiffany’s continues to hold together two different forms of refuge: the immediate calm she can seek in New York City and the durable sense of place she hopes someday to find.