Truman Capote was one of the most famous writers in American literature. As a child, he rarely saw his parents and was often left alone. Truman had always known he wanted to be a writer. When he was four, he taught himself to read, at age eight was learning to write, and wrote his first short story when he was ten. Two of his most famous works are In Cold Blood (1966) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958). Breakfast at Tiffany’s was later made into a movie which has become an American classic. Truman Capote’s work was greatly influenced by his childhood that was filled with neglect and abandonment. His work often had a dark theme with character that were lost, unwanted, and tried to find a safe place for themselves, like Capote was.
Truman’s mother, Lillie Mae Faulk, and father, Archulus “Arch” Persons, got married in Monroeville, Alabama on August 23, 1923. Lillie, former Miss Alabama, was a seventeen year old southern girl who was seeking a way to escape her life. She married twenty five year old Arch who believed that “his next get-rich-quick…show more content… “Known to drink, Capote began drinking more and started taking tranquilizers to soothe his frayed nerves” (Truman Capote Biography). He started to take drugs and his substance abuse got worse and worse as the years went on. When his story failed to win the Pulitzer Prize of National Book Award, he went into an even deeper depression. Capote had been promising readers for years that he was hard at work with a novel he called Unanswered Prayers. He was hit with the truth when Esquire magazine published four different chapters of his progress. His friends and family could easily identify which characters they were in “La Cote Basque, 1965”. They were furious and abandoned Capote, which crushed him. Capote had been abandoned all his life and the memory of being left by his parents was like cutting a wound back