describing and narrating the process of making the fruitcakes. This sentence includes sound, sight, and smell to create the impression of baking.

Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke.

A symbol is something that stands for something else, usually an object that represents an animate being or an abstract concept. The kites that Buddy and his friend make and fly stand for their friendship. This is emphasized at the end, when he remembers her after she has died.

[O]n this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.

Imagery is description that appeals to the five sense of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. In the opening of the story, Capote creates a sense of warmth and comfort as he uses imagery to describe the big country kitchen where Sook and Buddy spend much of their time:

A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

We can both see this room in our mind's eye and hear the sound of the fireplace.

A simile is a comparison that uses the words "like" or "as." An example from the story is: "moss drifts through the branches like gray mist." A charming simile that reinforces the kitchen as a place of safety and joy is:

The black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted pumpkin.

The fruitcakes are a symbol of Sook. Like her, they are generous. She sends them freely to anyone who strikes her fancy, whether she knows them or not:

Like President Roosevelt. Like the Reverend and Mrs. J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter. Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year.

They symbolize her nurturing and warm personality, as well her generosity. They also symbolize that she is, to most people in the world, perhaps a little cracked, for the word fruitcake is used to describe a person who is crazy in a harmless way. We know such generosity and kindness is not crazy, but her relatives, for example, treat her as a slightly crazed and irresponsible child.

Personification occurs when an animal or inanimate object is given human characteristics. An example of personification is Queenie's reaction to being given whiskey by Sook: "something like a grin stretches her black lips." As dogs don't normally grin, this describes Blackie as if she is a person—as she is treated by Sook throughout the story.

As an example of "fiction of nostalgia," Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" is a fondly melancholic recollection of his friendship with an older child-like cousin with whom he baked fruitcakes each Christmas.  The preparation and the baking became a traditional act for Buddy and his friend.

In this story of memories, there are items that attain symbolic meaning.  Here are three:

1.  the baby carriage The dilapidated baby carriage symbolizes Buddy's friendship with his cousin, an older, worn, child-like cousin of his who is in her sixties.  She is neglected now by others in the family, but each year Buddy interacts with her as they bake fruitcakes to give to strangers.  As the buggy was purchased for Buddy, it remains "a faithful object" that holds whatever Buddy and his cousin need to tote, unifying the two friends in their actions.

2.  the fruitcakes The act of purchasing the whiskey for the cakes and then the actual baking of the fruitcakes is a ritual that Buddy and his cousin follow every year.  The baking of the cakes is symbolic of Buddy and his cousin's act of love for others as  they give them to strangers. By giving the cakes to strangers, Buddy's cousin then accumulates thank-you notes from the White House, California, Borneo, etc. About these acts, Buddy reflects,

Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends?  I think yes.

Buddy and his cousin both are "fruitcakes" ( old American slang for odd people or social outcasts), and their sending the cakes to strangers indicates their timidity.

3. the kites The kites are gifts that Buddy and his friend give each other--she because she had to sell her cameo and has had no money with which to buy him a bicycle, Buddy because he cannot buy her a pearl-handled knife, or a radio.  Thus, the kites represent the free expression that lies within their hearts and their spirits.  As Buddy and his cousin "sprawl in the grass and...watch...kites cavort," the kites represent the innocent imagination of the two friends as well as their love that is freely given expression with each other.

Sadly, when Buddy is informed of the death of his cousin, he feels his loving friendship severed, "an irreplaceable part of myself, letting loose like a kite on a broken string." And it is with great melancholy that on a December monring he searches the sky,

As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.

For Buddy, the wind blows no more.  But his bittersweet memories evoke much emotion of a love he cherished in "A Christmas Memory."

There are similes in “A Christmas Memory” “She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen;” When speaking of the baby carriage Buddy says, “the wheels wobble like a drunkard’s legs.”  When counting money the quarters are counted and compared to rocks, “Nickels and quarters worn as smooth as creek pebbles.” And Buddy describing Haha’s café says, “river trees where moss drifts through the branches like gray mist.”

There are several conflicts in the story; one is the conflict of Buddy and his distant cousin against the other members of the household.  The conflict of how Buddy and his cousin will manage to get 30 fruitcakes made and mailed out before Christmas.  Another conflict is the depression era economy.

 "Time is its dominant structural element. There are two time periods in the story: the present, in which the narrator relates the story, and the distant past, when the narrator was a boy. The narrator quickly moves the reader into the distant past by issuing a series of commands: "Imagine a morning in late November...Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house." At the climax of the story, as Buddy and his cousin fly kites on Christmas day, die narrator brings the reader back to the present: "This is our last Christmas together."  

The climax is when Buddy is sent away to military school.  The resolution to the novel is the death of the cousin and Buddy says “home is where my friend is, and there I never go.”

One of the great writers of the twentieth century South, Truman Capote's style includes much beautiful prose.  In "A Christmas Memory" Capote writes a reminiscence, and, as such, it focuses on an experience, presenting the events and caracters as well as the special quality or meaning that keeps the memory alive.  To describe this special quality, the author often employs figurative language.

Two similes are in the second paragraph in which Capote describes his old friend, a woman with "shorn white hair" who stands at a window in the kitchen:

She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen...Her face is remarkable--not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind...

 Then, in the fifth paragraph, Capote writes of his old wicker baby buggy that they use for a shopping cart:

It is made of wicker, rather unraveled, and the sheels wobble like a drunkard's legs.

In order to make the fruitcake with whiskey, the two friends must find a bootlegger as the state laws forbid its sale at the time of Capotes' youth in the Deep South.  So, Mr. Haha Jones goes to the back of his cafe and procures some "home brew."  They pay him with "nickles and dimes and pennies."  Capote writes,

Suddenly, as he jangles the coins in his hand like a fistful of dice, his face softens.

After the two return to the kitchen,

The black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted pumpkin.

While they prepare the fruitcake, Capote and his cousin drink some of the whisky, becoming silly afterwards.  As Capote dances, the rat terrier, Queenie, rolls over

her paw plow the air, something like a grin stretches her black lips.  Inside myself, I feel warm and sparky as those crumbling logs, carefree as the wind in the chimney.  My friend waltzes round the stove, the hem of her poor calico skirt pinched between her fingers as though it were a party dress...

When other relatives enter and scold the woman for allowing Capote to drink whiskey, she runs to her room; there

she is weeping into a pillow already as wet as a widow's handkerchief.

Because these figures of speech enhance the descriptions, creating vivid pictures in the minds of the reader, Capote's "A Christmas Memory" is replete with simile.  There are many more to be found as these are only from the first half of the work.

Metaphors are not present in literature merely as brief descriptions but as overarching thematic elements as well.  In this way, metaphors can help widen understanding and deepen the impact of a story. Certainly this story has many brief descriptive metaphors, such as "Dollar bills, tightly rolled and green as May buds" and such descriptions can also hint at larger themes. Capote's writing is so skillful that even one brief phrase can serve to illuminate the entire story. In this example, the "May buds" represented by the dollar bills are reminiscent of hope, youth and the seemingly-eternal cycle of seasons, and all three of these are themes that inform the entire story.

Hope: Buddy knows that poverty defines his existence but he relishes the optimism and resilience of his elderly relative; the image of the bills as May buds suggests he knows that better times lie ahead.

Youth: Buddy's age during the majority of this memoir is belied by the very adult ways in which he describes this memory, but it is from the vantage point of adulthood that he can more effectively communicate the emotions he felt as child during these Christmas activities.

Cycle of Seasons: the repetition of the cry of "Oh, it's fruitcake weather"and the description of the seasonal activities (picking pecans to make the fruitcake, buying the whiskey, gathering greenery for decorations) serve to anchor this particular episode within the context of a number of years where the same events took place again and again, creating a rich and enduring memory for the author to draw upon.

Even though Capote later became a rich man after the sale of his book In Cold Blood, he clearly valued the wealth of experiences he had as a child living in relative poverty, thanks to the loving woman he lived with.

Here are a few:

1.  "the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar" (this could also be an example of personification, but only if it is the roar of a person - I see it as the roar of an animal, perhaps a huge bear, and thus metaphor)

2. describing a hat, "a straw cartwheel corsaged with velvet roses"

3.  Dusk turns the window into a mirror

Remember that a metaphor is a comparison without using the words "like" or "as" (which would be a simile), so look for things that create a picture in your mind of something else, as in the case of the window. It is not a mirror, but at dusk, it looks like a mirror. Writing "dusk turns the window into a mirror" however, is a much more beautiful way of making the comparison.