A Diamond Guitar Explication

Truman Capote’s, “A Diamond Guitar”, is a mellow dramatic depiction of two people who fell into each other’s lives, needed each other, and who inevitably used one another. Throughout the story you are led to believe that there is two main protagonist characters, but the author discretely turns one of them into an antagonist during the climax. Mr. Schaeffer is an older man, trapped in a “prison” on a farm that is surrounded by woods. The prison being a metaphor for his mind’s lack of freedom, serves as a vivid image, making it easier to visualize the story. As Tico and Mr. Schaeffer were attempting to escape, Mr. Schaeffer tripped and fell, leaving Tico hovering over him for a few seconds. Tico managed to escape, but Mr. Schaeffer did not. Although Tico was made to be the antagonist in the story, he wasn’t all that fallacious. He did not leave Mr. Schaeffer empty handed; instead he left him with something that gave him the gift of happiness, his diamond guitar. And although Tico left his friend, he must’ve known somewhere that Mr. Schaeffer would now never be alone. “Its glass diamonds are turning yellow; in the night his hand (Mr. Schaeffer) sometimes searches it out, and his fingers drift across the strings; then, the world.”

As the second to last paragraph begins on page 154, the words “Since then three winters have gone by…” signify the beginning of the resolution. The wording of this phrase is extremely important. If the author had just stated that three years have gone by, we the reader would not have had the cold lonely feeling and visualization that we do when we read, “three winters have gone by”. In this paragraph it speaks of how the place has become harder to escape, saying how the rain had washed deeper ruts in the clay road that leads to the farm and how a pair of searchlights had been added to the walls. The searchlights being the aftermath of Tico’s escape almost seem unnecessary, almost doubt anyone would be trying to escape soon. In the