Breakfast at Tiffany's

After her disruptive appearance at Holly’s party, Mag moves into Holly’s apartment. The relationship between the two women is tense and, like so many parts of Holly’s life, it is kept deliberately vague. Holly discusses Mag with the narrator and her tone suggests that she has no great affection for her new roommate. She mentions that Mag is a convenient pawn, someone whom Holly would not mind abandoning at a moment’s notice. She disparages Mag in the same way that other people disparage Holly. The cold treatment of Mag by Holly emphasizes Holly’s later point that she has no real friends. Other than O. J. Berman, the narrator, and Joe Bell, Holly’s life is devoid of genuine affection.

The trauma of Holly’s past goes some way to explaining why she struggles to form such bonds. She was abused by foster parents and guardians as a child, meaning that those closest to her have always taken advantage of her. Affection and exploitation are closely associated in Holly's mind, so her treatment of Mag is an example of how the pain of her past shapes her treatment of people in the present. Holly is haunted by trauma and the mistreatment of her friends and the cold, dispassionate way she talks about Mag emphasize how this pain lingers and festers in her psyche. That Mag later betrays Holly suggests that everyone in the novel is dealing with similar pain, to some extent.

O. J. Berman is juxtaposed against Mag as one of Holly's true friends. In a physical sense, he is the complete opposite of Mag. He is short, ugly, and male while Mag is tall, striking, and female. In Holly's eyes, O. J. is one of the few people who can be relied upon. Like so many people in Holly's life, however, there is a degree of self-interest in O. J.'s relationship to Holly: He is her former agent who once tried to turn her into a movie star. He nearly succeeded but Holly abandoned her audition and fled to New York. Although O. J. was originally financially invested in Holly's success, he now has minimal expectations of his relationship with Holly. While other men are interested in Holly for sex or, in the case of the narrator, because she is narratively captivating, O. J. is genuinely interested in helping Holly because he values her as a friend. Holly appreciates this and she tries to convey O. J.'s helpful attitude to the narrator by recommending certain changes that could be made to his stories. The narrator dismisses Holly's advice. He does not value the input of Holly or O. J. in a literary sense. As so often in the story, however, Holly is proved to be right. She and O. J. agree that the narrator's literary subjects are dull and they recommend that he write about something else. She also critiques his stories for having no real ending. Since the narrator decides to tell Holly's story—and the fact that her absence denies him a definitive ending—suggests that the narrator eventually agrees with Holly and O. J.’s assessment.

Holly's critique of the narrator's writing shows that she has an instinctive understanding of storytelling. Her life is an example of this instinct in action. The identity of Holly Golightly is a carefully constructed persona which is presented to the world. Holly chooses how much (or how little) of her past is permitted to be known. She masks the truth and allows people to have little glimpses of her true self, preserving the mystery which surrounds her and which so many people find captivating. The deliberate vagueness is one of Holly's main tools in constructing her identity. Her relationship to sex work, for example, is continually obfuscated. Throughout the story, Holly is accused of being a sex worker. Her neighbors and even the narrator either hint or directly accuse her of selling sex to men in exchange for money. These accusations are never made in good faith, however. The intent is always to insult Holly or to smear her reputation. At the same time, Holly never directly addresses these accusations. She alludes to a knowledge of sex work and she jokes about how she makes her money but she resents the implication from other people that she is a sex worker. As such, the relationship between Holly and sex work exists in a world of rumor, gossip, and deliberate mistruth. Whether Holly is a sex worker or not is almost irrelevant, as other characters are willing to use the mere suggestion as a weapon against her. The misogynistic nature of her society and the vulnerability of Holly as a poor, traumatized woman mean that these accusations are more powerful than the truth. Therefore, the vagueness of Holly’s position is both a self-defense mechanism and also a point of vulnerability—the truth is irrelevant in a world in which people have already judged her according to their own twisted set of hypocritical moral principles.