Nutshell: In

Truman
Capote's "A
Christmas
Memory" is a
very descriptive
story of Truman
and his friend
and their
Christmas
traditions.

Point of View/
Imagination:
The way that the
Capote thought
that histoy baby
carriage was a
"buggy" adds the
the seven year old
point of view and
that he is looking
back at this
experience in
hindsight.

Snapshot: The fact that an average family's dinner was biscuits and bacon shows just how
poor the Depression made people. Also, what the the children and the elderly woman do to
earn money and gather the materials that they need for everyday projects and for special gifts
shows not only how poor they were, but also how resourceful the Depression made people.

Sensory Details: The way that Capote uses vivid sensory details about Haha's Caf to
paint a picture in the head of the reader and know as much about the memory as he does.

Word Choice and Sentence Structure: The way that Capote phrases the part of the
short story where his friend and he get a little bit tipsy after drinking the whiskey does
showing by telling us what they did after drinking it instead of telling the reader that they
drank the whiskey and then acted like hooligans. Also, this show and not tell technique
adds the point of view of a seven year old.

Snapshot: Again we revisit the resourcefulness of the two. They save the foil that
Hershey's bars come wrapped in, a piece of trash that most of us would throw away
without a second thought, for christmas ornaments. They are also able to take a bunch of
seeming meaningless items and use them to decorate the tree.

Symbolism
In the short story, kites are very symbolic. They represent the relationship between seven year old Capote and his friend. Every year the
complete this christmas ritual and this strengthens their relationship, and every year, they give each other kites, showing that their friendships is still close. But as
Capote grows up and goes to military college, the letters are all that remain of their friendship and eventually she dies. When she does die, Capote always expects
to see a snapped kite flying toward heaven because his friend has now passed on and this is represented by her kite bing snapped.

Allegory: The way that Capote uses a simile to compare life to a kite implies that, like a kite,
we have a certain amount of control over it, but sometimes it dips and dives, and eventually,
the string snaps and it is time for us to be done with this life.