Misslight21 Children on Their Birthdays

A Taste Of Capote's Childhood.

Review

Anybody who has read Capote’s novel, Other Voices Other Rooms, will know that he initially denied that the narrative was autobiographical, or at least was partly the story of his childhood. He eventually surrendered and admitted that it was based largely on his experiences growing up in the Deep South of the United States, so part of me came to Children on Their Birthdays wondering if the tale was also rooted in Capote’s personal history.

Whether it is or not, Capote’s brilliance trickles throughout the short, the tale of which is filled with such atmosphere and realism that you’d be hard pushed to believe that none of the narrative is influenced by his childhood. Children on Their Birthdays tells the story of the effect a young girl has on a hot sleepy community near the town of Mobile in the Deep South. Capote commences the tale by instantly putting the reader ill at ease with the line, ‘Yesterday afternoon the six-o’clock bus ran over Miss Bobbit’, and so we naturally spend the entire time knowing that this little girl with her blonde curls and pretty dresses is going to die, and die soon.

This hook of a line seems to be a Capote staple, and this sense of unease is present in all of his major works, mirroring the writer’s personal anxieties and further fuelling suggestions that his tales are at least semi-autobiographical.

It is summer when the story takes place, ‘[…] the summer that never rained’, where ‘[…] rusted dryness coated everything’, in the town, a town which has all the signs of being a child’s paradise, but quite clearly is not. We know upon reading the first sentence that a child is going to die here, and all the plates of cakes and tutti-frutti seem to have a soporific effect on not just the children but the entire atmosphere. The town is not a comfortable place to be, and it is as though all of the protagonists have become passive through a lullaby, with the addition of Miss Bobbit mesmerising them further. The porch becomes still upon her arrival and all of the boys are transfixed.

Initially hypnotising those who see her, Miss Bobbit eventually rouses the town’s inhabitants, especially the children; the girls despise her for her proper ways and pretty dresses, while the boys compete voraciously to impress her. Billy Bob and Preacher Star’s very friendship is threatened by their adoration of Miss Bobbit, who does not walk, but ‘prances’. Billy Bob in fact seems to suffer from with what can only be described as the convulsions of drug addiction, writhing on his bed ‘[…] as though he were in pain, doubled up on the bed like a jackknife’, and it is this longing for Miss Bobbit that spells her doom.

Her own impetus is totally ambiguous throughout the story, as we never truly know her reasons for her actions. Capote’s children are never completely naïve; they are complicated, intelligent, ruthless human beings who are incredibly self-aware, and in Miss Bobbit’s case, know exactly how their actions affect others, though they feign innocence. She even has Billy Bob and Preacher Star work for her, paying them a wage, which results in the two friends fighting and hating each other. Miss Bobbit scolds them and tells them that she is not interested in either of them, pretending to be abashed at their violent outburst, but, in my opinion, she knows precisely what she is doing.

Miss Bobbit is indeed the architect of her own demise, becoming involved with Manny Fox, an unscrupulous showman whose show she performs dance routines in, allowing her to further mesmerise the crowd. She also sings, shocking the older members of the audience singing lyrics such as ‘…if you don’t like my peaches, stay away from my can, o-ho o-ho!’, in her ‘rowdy’ voice, before throwing up her skirt and displaying blue-lace underwear. Her presence in the town is a complete shock; she unsettles the adult population, enrages the young girls and arouses the boys, all of which combine together to produce a dangerous cocktail of insecurity, cultural diffidence and suspicion. The only person who loves her innocently is Rosalba, a little black girl who is merely glad of a friend.

The day Miss Bobbit is killed is the same day that she is meant to be leaving, and the bus that kills her is the very vehicle that would take her away from the community she has upset so keenly. Her death is slightly ambiguous, matching her personality throughout the tale, as she is killed running towards the two boys who adore her. They are both holding bunches of roses intended as parting gifts, so I wonder if her enthusiasm running towards them was a genuine desire to say goodbye to Billy Bob and Preacher Star, or a childish longing to own something pretty. The boys’ faces are masked by the roses, so it is totally credible to suggest that Miss Bobbit is merely running toward them to snatch these gifts away, and if so, it is her lust for material baubles that cause her death.

Again, the ambiguity of her character makes it impossible to judge Capote’s motives at the end of this tale, but if Children on Their Birthdays is at least partly autobiographical, we can assume that he knew an equally complicated little girl. Either way, the tale matches all other narratives that Capote wrote before and since, all of which read easily, but are in truth incredibly complex – the sign of a gifted writer.

We’ll never know the truth, and that’s the way I like it.

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