Justice And Punishment In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

The author successfully appeals to the reader through ethos. First, he presents himself as an informed person that understands the purpose of prisons in our societies. In line with this understanding, he acknowledges the fact that politicians formulate many laws to secure our societies from criminals. He further acknowledges the fact that, to some extent prisons have achieved their purpose. However, he expresses the need to change this strategy because it does not achieve much as expected. In the process of appealing to the reader through ethos, he presents himself as a victim of prisons. He claims that he was among thirty-one murders jailed in Louisiana back in 1962 for execution or life imprisonment (Rideau Para. 1). By so doing, he draws readers’ attention to his claim because he presents himself as somebody who understands what goes on in prisons.

Like Angela Davis, I believe that the prison system needs to be abolished. The prison system which is a significant part of punishment is incompetent and deeply flawed in the United States. Prison system reform needs immediate attention while abolition permanently will require time. Nietzsche’s theory of punishment explains how punishment come about in society and Davis’s critique of the prison system helps back my argument that the prison system needs to be abolished.

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.

In “The Death Penalty” (1985), David Bruck argues that the death penalty is injustice and that it is fury rather than justice that compels others to “demand that murderers be punished” by death. Bruck relies on varies cases of death row inmates to persuade the readers against capital punishment. His purpose is to persuade readers against the death penalty in order for them to realize that it is inhuman, irrational, and that “neither justice nor self-preservation demands that we kill men whom we have already imprisoned.” Bruck does not employ an array of devices but he does employ some such as juxtaposition, rhetorical questions, and appeals to strengthen his argument. He establishes an informal relationship with his audience of

Even before the first page is read, the readers are previously made aware of how the book ends, there is no secret to Capote’s novel. The story the novel provides the description of what took place before, during and after the murder trials, it explains the lives of the murderers themselves, and show how the

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is a nonfiction novel that is renowned for Capote’s use of intertwining the facts of a Kansas tragedy with various literary techniques such as his creative structure, flashback, tone and foreshadowing to transform this crime into an entrapping work of art. Capote also weaves in many important issues such as a look into the minds of criminals, the value of the death penalty, and a commentary on social divisions, which he uses the literary techniques to bring our attention and examine.

Capital punishment is a subject full of controversy. When it comes to the topic of the death penalty, most of us will readily agree that it’s a grim subject. Where this agreement usually ends however, is on the question of how necessary it is. Whereas some are convinced that capital punishment is not only cruel its useless as well, others maintain that it is necessary for justice to be adequately served . In the article “The Penalty of Death” by H.L. Mencken the author addresses the objections against the death penalty as well as his stand on the whole issue while using several rhetorical strategies to not only get his viewpoint across but, make the reader really think about their own stand on the death penalty. Three of the most effective

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 this day and age the term “murder” is coined as a word used in everyday language, albeit fifty years ago in the [rural] heartland of America, that word evoked emotion out of the entire town’s population. Prior to writing In Cold Blood, Truman Capote had written several pieces that lead him to writing a piece of literature that would infuse fiction and nonfiction, thus In Cold Blood was created, albeit after six years of research (“Truman” 84). "Truman Capote is one of the more fascinating figures on the American literary landscape, being one of the country's few writers to cross the border between celebrity and literary acclaim…He contributed both to fiction and nonfiction literary genres and redefined what it meant to join the

In In Cold Blood, Capote shows the theme of good vs evil throughout the book. It starts to show the evil building by Capote writing “they had celled together at Kansas State Penitentiary” on page 22. This caused the reader to feel that Dick and Perry were felons. Capote showed the good side by talking about how the whole town knew the Clutters and how Mr. Clutter was a great man, he treated Floyd Wells like everyone else and not a felon and “if you was a little short before payday, he’d always hand you a ten or a five”(160). The good and evil forces that Capote writes about shows the reader that these two sides will eventually collide. These two forces eventually collide when Perry and Dick broke into the Clutters’ house and “killed them one by one”(82). This is how the two forces react to each other, the Clutters were respectful to the soon to be murderers and they begged for their life, while Perry and Dick were waiting to kill them. This crime could be considered a devilish because the Clutters were killed on sunday which is considered a holy day. But this evil force was soon to be stopped by other good people. “‘It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Eben inappropriate. But I do. I apologize’”(340). This was said to Perry right before his execution because he knew he was about to pay for what he did to that family.

Capote comments in his quote on the punishment under the law that Perry and Dick will assume because he stated that life is the most valuable thing to men, thus when it is taken away in a cruel manner, the perpetrators should received death. Also, this quote contributes to the author’s purpose and overall theme of the novel by saying that the violence and carnage wrought by these criminals are not wholly their fault; therefore, in the criminal justice system they should be pitied and treated kindly according to Capote. Capote implies that the court systems should attempt to rehabilitate these mentally ill criminals and not try to murder them off with capital punishment. Thus, many laws will have to be changed and altered to account for the

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

This quote builds a mysterious, suspenseful tone that circulates throughout the entire book. It shows how the atmosphere of the town is about to change and that death is amongst them. This rhetorical device creates dramatic irony. Capote uses dramatic irony as he constantly shifts the scenes from the investigation to the lives’ of the killers within the book. The reader knows what will happen to the Clutter family while the characters are clueless. Mr. Johnson tells Mr. Clutter, "And from the looks of you, from what the medical reports tell us, we're likely to have you around a couple of weeks more," (47). Johnson tells Clutter this not long before he is killed. This quote used by Capote gives the reader chills as they know Mr. Clutter won’t be alive that long. Capote uses this statement to show how other characters in the book weren’t aware of what was bound to happen. Truman Capote uses flashbacks to characterize the killers and show their pasts. This rhetorical choice allows the reader to connect with the killers, understanding their motives and how their lives were leading up to the killing. Capote characterizes Dick when he states “Inez was a

The argument is divided between the north and the south. The norths argument is seen through the eyes of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia who believes that the incarceration of large numbers of people is an acceptable punishment, a “reformist tradition”, a rehabilitative mode, an idea that by incarcerating a person they can be restored to a good condition through rehabilitation (6). Where as the souths argument is summed up by Robert Perkinson the author of “ Texas Tough: The rise of America’s Prison Empire”. Perkinson’s argument is that the south sees the prison system as a slave plantation, an injustice discipline (3). The south argues for a “retributive mode”justice based on the punishment of the offender rather than the rehabilitation of the offender (6). In