Children On Their Birthdays By Truman Capote Analysis
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What would a person expect that a thirteen-year-old would stroll into a simple town and influence anyone that came into contact with her? It is Miss Bobbit, who Truman Capote portrays as the town’s temporary ray of sunshine. In “Children on Their Birthdays”, Capote incorporates the use of situational irony and exaggerated characterization to present the story’s theme of fatal first love.
In the way the story introduces us to the main character, we see how the other characters are in an immediate trance with Miss Bobbit. “Society helplessly admires her and considers her crazy at the same time, but Capote and his narrator have only admiration for her” (Nance 136). In the beginning on the story, Ms. Bobbit is exaggeratedly characterized through…show more content… Fatal love begins as a wonderful feeling that we want to experience over and over again, but are suddenly shattered by the blink of an eye. “He grasps a situation at once terrible, creating it out of the absurdities of love among children”(Fiedler 61). Using children instead of adults compels the story more by observing the first love in the eyes of people who yet grasp the understanding of love. Furthermore, he illustrates the theme by creating a competition between Billy Bob and Preacher to gain the heart of Miss Bobbit. They go out of their way to gain her love through flowers and romantic gestures. Although Miss Bobbit states that she “[doesn’t] want a sweetheart”, the boys figure out a strategy that foresees they pursue her at the same time (33). Because of an unexpected, fatal situation, their plan ended in failure, leaving them with only a memory of an extraordinary girl that impacted their lives forever. Too much love killed Miss Bobbit, proving that she was the actual definition of fatal love in the story. Capote concludes the theme of the story ties into the “American cultural dream, suggesting that our dreams are a kind of bad French, romantic but imprecise” (Zacharias