A Rhetorical Analysis Of In Cold Blood

In the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, four horrific murders shock the small, innocent town of Holcomb, Kansas, the murders all occur on one night killing an entire family. Before the killings, the town felt like a family. The citizens of Holcomb were seen as good people, innocent and free of worry. However, after the Clutter murders take place, a community that seems so tightly knit quickly dissipates. The murder

The nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote takes place in the small and quiet town of Holcomb, Kansas. Capote takes the reader through the sequence of events that transpired before, during, and after the Clutter family was murdered on November 15, 1959. He describes in detail the background of each of the main characters. This helps to clarify the motives of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith as they murder the Clutters. He illustrates how a positive or negative influence of a person’s environment, lifestyle, and sometimes family can either influence them to become contributing members of society or make them turn to a life of crime, this is shown by Capote through the Clutters, Richard Hickock,

Truman Capote characterizes Holcomb as a innocent and peaceful farm town with a small population of people and a few rundown buildings. As he describes the town of Holcomb he paints a picture that not a lot happens in the town and that the surrounding towns do not pay attention to Holcomb or even know that the small town exists. Capote describes the town as being melancholy, lonesome and unknown he describes the town like this so that when a crime happens in this town it has a greater impact on the people. In order to convey these ideas Capote uses a great deal of imagery and has a good use of diction that is easy to understand so that his ideas come across clear and he is able to paint the picture he wants to paint.

Throughout In Cold Blood Capote goes through the lives of the killers, Dick and Perry. Both convicts released from jail and at first glance seem to have a lot in common, but as the book continues the reader can see that the two characters are in fact very different. To characterize the killers Capote frequently uses flashbacks into their pasts, giving the reader a sense of what their lives were like and why they became who they are. Capote also utilizes detailed descriptions of the men’s appearances, quirks, and habits to characterize the murderers.

In Truman Capote’s captivating nonfiction, In Cold Blood, Capote ventures through the journey and lives of both the killed and the killers all while analyzing the point in which they crossed paths. From the days before the four Clutters were murdered to the last moments of the two killers’ lives, Capote takes into account each and every aspect that creates the ‘famous’ Clutter Case with an in depth look of just how and why these strange and unforeseeable events occurred. What was originally supposed to only be an article in a newspaper turned into an entire book with Capote analyzing both how and why a murder comes to be through the use of pathos, juxtaposition, and foreshadowing.

In the beginning of the novel, Capote describes the community of Holcomb as a “peaceful congregation of neighbors and old friends” (Capote 88). Everyone was involved in 4-H with the Clutters, went to school with Nancy and Kenyon, or attended church with the family every Sunday. However, their attendance at the local Methodist church each week did not prevent the feeling of a cold barrel of a shotgun pressed against each their heads just before their deaths. All their lifestyle did was confuse the authorities, who thought “‘Of all the people in all the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered’” (Capote 85). This imposes

The purpose for Truman Capote's writing of his book, In Cold Blood was to take literary definitions to a whole new level. He used them in ways that people were able to relate to them personally. He did this by using several different types of literary devices. Nancy's diary for instance, is used to symbolize the impossible future that will never happen for her. The purpose of Nancy's diary is for her to collect all of the things that she had gone through each day, so that someday, when things were looking up for her, she would be able to go back and read all of the hard times that she had once gone through. This never happens, as we know, due to her death. But coincidentally, the last entry that Nancy ever makes, sadly, is about how she had yet another boring, uneventful day, but she also involuntarily wrote about how when you have no life, and no hope, that even the last night of your life, no future is boring. Capote's clever thought out analogy for Nancy's consisted of something that many adults are able to

In Cold Blood is a very fitting title, because Capote presents a cold and unemotional view of Holcomb,Kansas. His tone, Imagery,and Selection of details create a distant and detached picture of the community.

The excerpt from the opening of In Cold Blood written by Truman Capote, he talked about the desert-like town of Holcomb, Kansas. Truman capitalizes on many rhetorical effects such as imagery and alliteration. He uses imagery to show the type of town that Holcomb is; small, boring, and “out there.”

Residents of Holcomb, Kansas, did not expect an atrocious tragedy would occurred in their small quiet town on November 15, 1959. During the night of the tragedy, four members of the Clutter family were ferociously murdered with a click of a shotgun held by a vile man, Perry Smith. Truman Capote, who was an American novelist, was intrigued by the news and decided to set his goal to write a book about the crime while setting his purpose on creating a new genre of writing. As he got more involved in the crime case, he slowly shifts his original purpose from creating a new type of writing to portraying Perry as a sympathetic figure because of his close relationship with him.

Truman Capote describes a town that I can easily picture, because he uses a lot detail and imagery in his opening of In Cold Blood that allows me to envision a small town very similar to the town I live in. Although our town isn’t that well known it still receives some attention and our school system wouldn’t be described as Capote describes Holcomb’s school. His structure and tone builds the town as boring, empty, and alone. Until the end when he describes their school. A complete juxtaposition to the rest of the town.

Capote’s Control Over Language By using vivid sentences with descriptive details and keen word choices, Capote is able to paint an image of Holcomb as a soft, easygoing town. When working on this novel, Truman Capote traveled to Holcomb, Kansas to gather information by conducting interviews with the residents and talking to the police, reading newspapers, and interrogating Hickock and Smith in their jail cells. His visits, as well as his writing career, give him the proper credibility to write about this famed town. Capote’s rendition of the tragedy of one night on a Kansas farm as he tells it in his unique literary genre adds to the authenticity of the piece.

Holcomb, Kansas is a town that a considerable amount of people would pass over; limited, peaceful, dull, all concepts that Truman Capote describes from the excerpt of In Cold Blood. Capote paints a vivid picture using many forms of stylistic elements, describing Holcomb with a variety of imagery and a selection of detail. Therefore, using these types of elements, he allows you to completely see the town displayed from this excerpt.

Capote illustrates Holcomb as the ideal American small town and how the community is a close knit group through the use of tone in the text. His use of tone portrays Holcomb as a blitheful town: “That Monday, the Sixteenth of November, 1959, was still another fine specimen of pheasant weather on the high wheat plains of western Kansas--a day gloriously bright skied, as glittery as mica” (Capote 77).

In his 1965 nonfiction novel, Capote paints a disturbingly vivid picture of the quadruple murder of the Clutters, a highly regarded and semi-wealthy farming family from Holcomb, Kansas. In Cold Blood examines the incentives and methods used by the killers, as well as the effect these murders had on the small Kansas town.