Power And Imagery In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Capote talks about the lives of both killers previous to the murders in fairly significant detail. In the case of Perry Smith, his parents divorced early in his childhood and neither his mother nor father really wanted him. This produced feelings of abandonment and uselessness early on in Perry and affected the rest of his life. Capote brings up a letter written to the Kansas State Penitentiary about Perry by Perry's father, who was trying to have Perry paroled for a previous crime he had committed. Perry says that "this biography always set racing a series of emotions--self pity in the lead, love and hate evenly at first, the latter ultimately pulling ahead" (130). Perry didn't feel as though his father ever knew him very well, or even wanted to know him. He says, "whole sections of my Dad was ignorant of. Didn't understand an iota of...I had this great natural musical ability. Which Dad didn't recognize. Or care about...I never got any encouragement from him or anybody else" (133). When Perry's father threw him out of the house one evening because his father could no longer afford to have Perry live with him, Perry lost his sense of direction in life. He even says

Besides using anecdotes and stories from his childhood, Capote also used analogies to invoke a sense of sympathy for Perry, thus further using the means of pathos. In specific, a constant ‘comparison’ or analogy coupled with Perry is typically his ‘childish’ like structure. Short legs, small feet. This analogy is used constantly, including the hanging scene, where it is said Dewey had “open his eyes [and] saw the same childish feet, tilted, dangling”(Capote 341). This comparison is seen often when describing Perry and seems to give the man a childlike presence, making him come across as more innocent and understandable. This connection to Perry takes away from the ‘severity’ of his actions and instead reminds readers of his childhood and how it has affected him all through life. Using pathos to soften the personality of a killer and bring to life his struggles helped Capote to better exemplify the ‘makings’ of a murderer. When creating this book, Capote wanted to analyze how a murder came to be and thus how a murderer came to exist - in particular, Perry. The use of pathos in correlation to one of the main characters helped break down the hostile killer into a damaged, young, sensible young man who simply had a tough go at life. The device allowed for connection and personalization.

The type of diction constructed was not the only logic behind reader’s changing perspectives. The visual imagery provided by Capote was another component of the development of sympathy towards the criminals. When Perry shares his story of the murders to the investigators, it is evident by the imagery that Perry was against violence and hoping to avoid it, unlike his partner,

Truman Capote includes finite details such as Perry’s middle name, and goes down to even the name of the county that Perry was born and grew up in to appeal to his audience’s logic. By giving more detail to Perry’s past life, the audience is able to better grasp the image of Perry, which humanizes the murderer, and is more likely to create an emotion of sympathy towards the criminal and alter the audience’s view on capital punishment. This information is irrelevant to the plot, however, is very strong in supporting Capote’s argument.

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 most dominant strategy that Capote utilizes in order to achieve his purpose is pathos, as he plays on our emotions to get us to feel true sympathy for Perry Smith. This is strategy is overall the most effective one because it allows the viewers to perceive Perry differently. Capote mentions Perry’s abusive and neglectful childhood several times throughout the story’s course in order to make the readers feel empathic, and pitiful towards him. In one instance of the novel, Capote makes out Perry as a hero in a way. He sets up a picture of the killers at the beach, and he mentions how uncomfortable Perry is when he sees Dick talking to a young girl. He describes another instance like this when he says, “Hadn’t they almost got in a fight when quite recently he had prevented Dick from raping a terrified girl” (Capote 202). Perry is willing to stand up to his partner when he comes to situations like this. Readers can’t help but view Perry as a hero in his own way as he protects the young girls from Dick’s pedophilic mind. Capote plays on the assumption that everyone hates child predators, which is almost always true. In a way, Capote makes us feel admiration for Perry’s heroic effort in protecting the innocent, as he “prevented Dick” from doing something horrible. As Perry confesses his crime to Dewey and Duntz, he admits, “But I hoped we could do it without violence” (234). This is one of several moments where the readers get a sense of reluctance from Perry to commit the crime. Although Perry did eventually

Truman Capote put a lot of thought into this writing and in order to change the way people looked at this almost new type of writing, he decided to demonstrate pathos in order to do this. In the novel when talking about the murders Perry said, “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” (204). Right here Capote almost makes you feel bad for Perry and tries to show that Perry really is not an evil person and almost did not want to commit the murders. Now this supports his purpose because nobody tries to make the reader feel bad for the murderers. They are usually viewed as evil, disturbed people yet Perry is almost looked upon as someone who is not evil and almost as just someone who was forced into this. Nobody ever feels bad for a murderer yet in this novel, almost everyone starts to feel bad for them. Which really changes the way people write these types of novels and at the time seemed very unorthodox. Capote also makes people sympathize for the murderer by having Perry talk about his background. Perry says, “‘What she used to do, she’d fill a tub with ice-cold water, put me in it, and hold me under till I was blue. Nearly drowned. But she got found out, the bitch. Because I caught pneumonia. I was so sick that Dad came back. When I got well, he took me away’” (132). Now with almost every murderer they have a very rough upbringing yet people still do not

The best novels are the ones that connects with the reader and just toys with their emotions, as if they too were also in the story by using pathos, the most powerful appeal. This holds true with Truman Capote’s, In Cold Blood and his writing appealing to the reader’s emotions in the portrayal of Perry Edward Smith and Richard “Dick” Eugene Hickock, the two murders with an addition of Capote showing a great deal of favoritism to Perry over Dick. Throughout the novel, Capote uses tone and diction to allure the reader into the novel’s world and into every character’s life, just as if we knew their whole backstory.

Aren’t we all a bit crazy at times? In Truman Capote’s rhetorical masterpiece, In Cold Blood, is about a murder that actually occurred in a small town in Kansas. Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, also known as Dick and Perry, are the criminal minds behind the murder. Capote’s work is regarded to as a masterpiece because he uses many rhetorical devices to convey his message. He uses rhetorical devices such as diction, imagery and pathos. Capote’s purpose for writing the book is to show the insights of what goes on in these two’s criminal minds and to humanize Perry.

Throughout In Cold Blood, Truman Capote presents the idea of how one’s upbringing can shape what kind of person he becomes. This idea ultimately ends up showing what makes a killer a killer, which is Capote’s second authorial intent. As a child, Perry Smith was neglected by his parents, which ultimately leads to his psychological problems and him killer the four family members. All of his siblings went to school, but he was never allowed, and Perry never forgave his dad that they had the opportunity to get an education but he did not. He always despises all well educated people because they got an opportunity that he did not. For example, while Perry was on death row, he did not get along with one of his fellow inmates named Lowell Lee Andrews. He would always correct Perry’s speech and this made him mad. Perry felt that he should keep his “mouth shut [rather] than to risk one of the college kid’s snotty lines” (318). While Perry was a child he was also abandoned at an orphanage that was run by nuns. While he was there, "[t]here was this one nurse... she [would] fill a tub

Capote uses syntax to further capitalize on Perry’s dark origins as a source of cruelty. Using brief, but meaningful sentences, Perry is portrayed as a victim of society, repeatedly referring to the people who treated him poorly during his growth. His dark origins capitalized on when he describes his motives for killing the Clutter family: “‘And it wasn’t because of anything the Clutters did. They never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it’s just that the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it’” (290). Perry himself is emphasizing how the Clutters are innocent, but, because of the way people treated him his entire life, they unfortunately had to receive the brunt of his pent-up aggression. He repeats the phrase “like…” to once again draw attention to the fact that it was the people in his life that turned him into the criminal he grew to be. Noting how Perry essentially held a grudge against his childhood

In the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood the author, Truman Capote, writes about the horrific slaughter of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Capote distances himself from the story; he weaves together the final moments of the Clutter family and the life of the murders together to tell the story of that fateful night. This novel is written objectively and it also evokes sympathy toward the killers due to their depressing, dispiriting past. Capote achieves this through his use of diction, figurative language, detail, and syntax. Through the use of diction such as “motive,” “victims,” and “evidence” Capote conveys a matter-of-fact tone (Capote 63, 89).

“In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote is a nonfiction book based on a real crime happened in the peaceful town of Holcomb, Kansas. Capote wrote from both victim and criminal side to show both thoughts and point of view of the story to avoid the one-sided account. In the book, Truman Capote, a former journalist and the author of “In Cold Blood” is making readers feel sympathy for Perry since Capote befriended with Perry while interviewing him. Capote uses of pathos and strong diction effectively in order to evoke sympathy for Perry’s childhood environment and deleterious effect it had on Perry’s mind. To begin with, Capote uses emotional appeal in order to illustrate Perry’s devastating past.

Having in mind his words, a reader can definitely see what Truman Capote tried to achieve by writing the book In Cold Blood, a novel based on the actual murder of a respected farm family that lived in Holcomb, Kansas in the late 1950s. The inhuman slaughter is done by the two former prisoners Dick and Perry, who gather together, united by the only aim to commit the perfect robbery without leaving a living witness. The story traces the plan of the murderers, the commitment of the crime and the consequences that are left, by going deeper into the nature of the characters who are involved or affected. Truman Capote uses the rhetorical device of imagery through sensory detail descriptions that aim to make the reader see beyond what's obvious and perceive the story not just as a historical record. Yet.