Topography in Truman Capote's The Grass Harp: Dolly Talbo as a Stranger

Yoshimitsu NAKAYAMA

doi:10.24585/daion.52.0_31

Throughout Truman Capote's The Grass Harp, places described in the text are associated with characters and textual themes. The tree-house, for instance, is located on the edge of River Woods which itself stands on the border of the town. To escape Verena Talbo's oppression, Dolly Talbo, Collin Fenwick and Catherine Creek seek refuge in the tree-house, mutually aligning with the attributes the three share: marginality and otherness. Judge Charlie Cool who also embodies the same attributes joins them there. Similarly, set against the central location of Verena's room in the Talbo house, the attic is positioned at a marginal location, a corner where Collin secretly builds a sense of intimacy with Dolly. Such locations as well as the characters who retreat there can be perceived as a center/periphery dichotomy where the center dominates the periphery. This analytical approach affords recognition of opposing concepts or worlds shadowed in the text: exterior/interior, life/death, fixedness/wandering, reality/unreality, immaturity/maturity, order/disorder, among others. Especially, it is Dolly who oscillates between the above dichotomies, with her veil flapping in the wind as a symbol of her freedom and fleetingness of her portrayed characters.

Topography in Truman Capote's The Grass Harp: Dolly Talbo as a Stranger

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