A Study Guide for Truman Capote's "Miriam"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Truman Capote's "Miriam", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781535868099

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Short Stories for Students, Volume 49

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Miriam

Truman Capote

1945

Introduction

Truman Capote's long, illustrious career as a writer started with a bang in 1945 when his story Miriam was published in the prestigious magazine Mademoiselle. It was Capote's first story published in a national magazine; it won him the O. Henry Award and instantly established him as one of the best-known writers of his time. He was only nineteen.

Miriam tells the story of an odd little girl who keeps appearing in the life of a lonely widow living in New York City. The woman (whose name is also Miriam, a fact the story mentions only glancingly) does not know if the girl is in trouble and needs help or is a wily manipulator or if she is even real. Capote imbues this story with a creepy sense of mystery, drawing on the Southern Gothic tradition he grew up with in New Orleans and Mississippi and telling it with the plain, straightforward tone he honed as a writer and journalist. Miriam was reprinted in the short-story collection A Tree of Night and Other Stories in 1949. In 1981, it appeared as a stand-alone volume under the