Harper Lee and Truman Capote, two of the greatest authors of the 20th century, were once prodigious best friends. And best friends share everything; their thoughts, their dreams, but above all, their ideas. So could it be possible that Capote, a prolific writer, may have had a role in the writing of Lee's esteemed novel, To Kill a Mockingbird? Doubtful. Comparing Lee's unique work to Capote's "A Christmas Memory" one can see that, despite the similarities, these friends' works differ too much in the way they set the tone, emphasize the themes and use the images they worked on Together. his novel. The first area, where Capote and Lee vary, is their use of style to create tone. Due to two extremely different plots, the tones themselves contrast with one carefree and dreamy, the other worried and critical. However, both have a sense of nostalgia combined with a childlike simplicity. Their stylistic distinctions derive directly from their different verb tenses. While To Kill a Mockingbird is in the past tense, “A Christmas Memory” is in the present tense. This is important because both are told as first-person flashbacks by the older narrator. Capote's present-tense memory immerses the reader as if he were being relived. The way he begins the story is by structuring the scene: “Imagine a morning in late November. The advent of a winter morning more than twenty years ago” (p.145). By using the word “imagine” the scene is conveyed as thoughtful and dreamy. True nostalgia hits hardest at the end, when the narrator thinks back to what he has lost. Lee tells his story in a different way. His entire novel is based on an adult reflecting on a previous experience. The way he thought, the way he acted; it's... half the paper... analyzing one famous work of each, one can say that not only did they lead very different lives, but they were very different writers. The tone beyond the hedge fluctuates in a tone that is inferred from the behavior of the characters since the narrator's observations are basic. “A Christmas Memory” sets up each scene with an abundance of vivid images and thoughts, dramatically changing moods with simple changes in syntax. Yet, with all the literary techniques and figurative language, the subtle theme of Capote's story ended up creating a much simpler tale. His best friend Lee's only novel made history for the powerful way it set up and presented the theme of prejudice and judgment. And this is the real differentiation in the writing of the two friends, because if the very way in which they structure their pieces varies so much, how could one of them have transferred their style to that of the other??