Written in 1958, Breakfast at Tiffany's reflects the emerging concerns of postwar America and looks forward to the turbulent 1960s. In the late 1950s, Congress had turned its attention from subversives to the Mafia, and hearings revealed both the Mafia's role in the distribution of drugs and its infiltration of cafe society. Truman Capote's Holly Golightly eventually is caught up in this scandal. Her benefactor, "Sally" Tomato, is a Mafia kingpin imprisoned at Sing Sing. Asked to make an old man happy by visiting him each Thursday morning, Holly agrees, not realizing that Sally and his henchman Oliver O'shaughnessy are using her to deliver messages concerning the drug trade. At the novel's climax, she is arrested, and the ensuing scandal not only makes her a social pariah, but literally costs her everything.

Holly's attitude toward conventional morality also reflects the sexual revolution that was in its early...