Which one is the real Miriam?
In the short story, “Miriam” by Truman Capote, Miriam is a doppelganger of the protagonist also named Miriam (Mrs. Miller). Truman capote employs the motif of a doppelganger through the choices of when the doppelganger that represents Mrs. Miller is shown. Miriam is not real mainly based on the fact that she appears and reappears at random. One is lead to believe that Miriam is the will to die in Mrs. Miller, or the Angel of Death, if you will, because Miriam only shows up when Mrs. Miller is present with monotony and stuck in the doldrums of life. Mrs. Miller is, on a subconscious level, thinking of whether or not she wants to die; Miriam is the hallucinated manifestation of this subconscious debate. Capote blatantly portrays Miriam as the symbol for the angel of death. When Miriam leans over to Mrs. Miller and states “kiss me good night” (pg. 374) and Mrs. Miller refuses to so then Miriam destroys a vase containing paper flowers, representing that she is a doppelganger, is illustrative of Mrs. Miller’s refusal to die (AP). Later in the story Mrs. Miller is pestered once more by the angel, so she goes to the downstairs apartment and sends a neighbor up to confirm that there is indeed a person in her apartment. This search comes up empty, so Mrs. Miller goes up stairs and question whether or not Miriam was real. After returning back to normal and doing things around the house she notice a double sound then opened her eyes to Miriam standing there. The story closes with ambiguous line “ ‘Hello’ said Miriam” (pg. 379). One must keep in mind that they are both named Miriam, so this could represent Mrs. Miller’s acceptance of death, or Mrs. Miller’s fate that she is destined to be shadowed by death until she is in fact dead. Through Mrs. Miller concern for the girl, Miriam’s age and adolescent qualities, as well as Miriam never releasing a name of her parents, Miriam does not only represent the angel of death but the repressed psyche...