In Cold Blood Truman Capote Analysis

While reading Truman Capote's novel,"In Cold Blood ", I spent more than one night lying awake in my bed, frightened by Capote's presentation of the facts surrounding the murder of an obscure Kansas farmer and three of his family members. Several times, I caught myself wondering why this book

Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood with the intention of creating a new non-fiction genre, a creative spin on a newspaper article with the author, and his opinions and judgments completely absent from the text, leaving only the truth for the reader to interpret. The pages of In Cold Blood are filled with facts and first-hand accounts of the events surrounding the brutal murder of a wealthy unsuspecting family in Holcomb, Kansas. Author Truman Capote interviewed countless individuals to get an accurate depiction of every one affected by and every side of the murder. Although he declares himself an unbiased and opinion-free author, based on the extensive descriptions of one of the murderers, Perry Smith, there is much debate about this

For centuries, men and women have murdered each other for greed, lust, revenge, etc. However, in 1959, Truman Capote traveled to Holcomb, Kansas to discover the other side of murder. Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood, offers a close examination of the horrid murder of the Clutter family. He explored how two men of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and personalities joined together to kill an innocent family for riches. Capote provides different points of view through each of his character’s eyes for his readers’ better understanding of the murderers. The use of juxtaposition compares and contrasts Dick to Perry, the murders. Capote succeeds with using juxtaposition to reveal the murderer's how he perceived them.

Capote's structure in In Cold Blood is a subject that deserves discussion. The book is told from two alternating perspectives, that of the Clutter family who are the victims, and that of the two murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. The different perspectives allow the reader to relive both sides of the story; Capote presents them without bias. Capote masterfully utilizes the third person omniscient point of view to express the two perspectives. The non-chronological sequencing of some events emphasizes key scenes.

The dynamic partnership between Dick and Perry stems from their egos, or lack thereof. Perry is especially self-conscious, and his behavior as presented in the book is due to his sense of lacking and

Written in a time period in which people who are found guilty are immediately assumed as such, Truman Capote was able to write a non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood, that had characters that he believes deserve to be seen as humans, even victims themselves, rather than criminals. Truman Capote manipulates language elements, achieving his purpose of telling a story that shows the potential corruptness of the criminal justice system and plays toward the humanity of the criminal rather than the viciousness of the crime.

New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, Sydney, even Rio de janeiro are exciting extravagant populous cities across the world filled with adventure and endless opportunity. Holcomb, Kansas is rightfully not mentioned in this group. This town east of the Colorado border is a stranger to even the Santa Fe Railroad that divides the community in half. Truman Capote expresses the “lonesome area” that is Holcomb in the introduction of In Cold Blood through diction and imagery.

In “In Cold Blood” (1966) from page 200 to 202, Capote give us the insight into the past of Dick and Perry characters that caused them to resent a certain type of situation or condition. The author acknowledge this matter by showing how Dick and Perry nature being revealed through what they seen and encounter on their get away trip, first he inform us about how the view of the sea, and people Dick see in the hotels remind him of how he growth to feel hostile against people who possessed thing that he known he couldn’t have, “Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing? Why should that “big shot bastard” have all the luck?” (Rhetorical question and Parallelism were used to emphasize Dick animosity), “open them up and let

Truman Capote writes a genius book about a real murder that happened and he tore the case apart to find out every detail that happened in the crime. In Cold Blood is about two men who almost get away with a hostile murder of a family. How a lead detective on the case gets so pressured about finding these men. It is also about the anxiety that these murders put on the killers because one of them is afraid they are going to get caught. The town that turns on each other and locks their doors at night and prays no one comes in. Capote’s purpose in this book was sympathizing with the killer and all the other people in the book, also in the book he presents foreshadowing, and Pathos, he has many other Rhetorical Strategies but these are the important Strategies.

1: What is the central argument the writer makes in your book? For example: “[Author name] argues that . . . because . . .”

In his 1965 novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote chronicles the murder of the wealthy Clutter family and the subsequent capture and trial of their killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. The events of the book play out over a period of nearly six years, from the crime’s conception to the execution of the murderers, supplemented by Capote’s numerous interviews with living members of the Clutter family, their neighbors, their murderers, and the detectives on the case. It is widely regarded as the first non-fiction novel, and explores the motives and consequences in a horrendous murder case from many perspectives. In order to question commonly held moral absolutes, Capote adds dimension to the standard murder trial narrative and forces the audience to understand the nuances and intricacies of an unfathomable situation by humanizing both the victims and perpetrators of a hideous crime.

Intro: The perspective of both killers, Dick and Perry, is shown in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in the section “Persons Unknown.” Truman sets the scene before each killer's point of view is being told by stating, “Mountains. Hawks wheeling in a desert sky.” This allows the reader to see that this is same moment in time that is about to be told from one or two ways, it signifies importance. The way Capote differentiates the moments in time is by giving each killers intake, he uses great diction and description of the certain events to show their emotions and thought process regarding certain events. Cleverly, Capote is able to use numerous rhetorical strategies such as foreshadowing, diction and imagery. The language in between both passages

In the final months of 1959, the Clutter family was brutally murdered in their Holcomb, Kansas, home. Reports of their murders made national news. One of these headlines captured the attention of Truman Capote who chose to pursue the story further; eventually, after years of research and thousands of pages of notes, he penned In Cold Blood. It was first published in 1966, and it found immediate success. Capote’s original storytelling methods combined with the sensationalism of the crime was instrumental in creating, at the very least, popularizing a new genre: creative nonfiction. Utilizing unique narrative structure and author-tainted character development, Capote weaves a tale that questions the authenticity, the intent, and the meaning of justice.

A reference point can be defined as an intentional use of a specific thing to indicate another thing . In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood there are a series of different reference point. In Part 2 of the book,"Persons unknown", Capote uses a reference points to compare and contrast the murderers thought process at the moment and evoke sympathy from the audience. The murderers were two ex-convicts named Perry Edward Smith and Richard "Dick" Eugene Hickock who took part in a robbery gone wrong. In the Epigraph of In Cold Blood, Capote incorporates a poem called "The Ballad of the Hanged Men" written by a French poet named Francois Villon ,who was awaiting his death sentencing. Men my brothers who live after us, have your hearts not hardened against

The captivating story of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is a beautifully written piece describing the unveiling of a family murder. This investigative, fast-paced and straightforward documentary provides a commentary of such violence and examines the details of the motiveless murders of four members of the Clutter family and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers. As this twisted novel unravels, Capote defines the themes of childhood influences relevant to the adulthood of the murderers, opposite personalities, and nature versus nurture.