The Clutter Death In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" is the story of Perry and Dick and the night of November 15, 1959. This investigative, fast-paced and straightforward documentary provides a commentary on the nature of American 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.

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 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

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.

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.

When we hear about a killing on the news, our natural instincts are to immediately antagonize the killers. More likely than not, we hate the killers, and hope they get a vengeful prison sentence. In Truman Capote’s true crime non-fiction book, In Cold Blood, we learn about the murders that took place in Holcomb. The story is about much more than the slaying of a respectful family, its focus is on the killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. One of Capote’s main purposes in the book is to convey the multiple perspectives of a crime in order for the readers to view the killers as more than just the bad guys, and he achieves his purpose primarily through the use of pathos, anecdotes, and his chosen narrative.

3. In “In Cold Blood”(1965), a nonfiction novel, Truman Capote accounts for the murder of the Clutter family, residing in Holcomb, Kansas, and the events that followed. The mode of development includes Gothic themes and motifs to make the audience question the roles of the protagonists and the antagonists, “Uh-huh. But you’ll have to kill me first”, said Perry to Dick when he proposed to rape Nancy Clutter; Capote also juxtaposes between different time periods to make the audience question what had really happened in the Clutter household. This work of “new-age journalism” continually asserts that Perry killed the Clutters, although scant evidence is produced. Capote’s target audience is the people who are part of the criminal justice system and psychologists. Capote is trying to prove that all people are inherently benevolent, but when they have had traumatic events occur in their past, they have injured psyches, thus attempting to explain the formerly inexplicable murders.

Many people say the documentation of the murder of the Clutter family is Truman Capote’s best work. It started out as an article for The New Yorker, and evolved into the non-fiction novel; the first of its kind. Capote traveled to Kansas with friend Harper Lee to research the killings. In the course of six years bringing this narrative together, Capote began taking drugs and drinking heavily due to the dark nature of the book. Truman Capote tells the true story of a family murdered in In Cold Blood, through character analysis and symbolism to prove nature is a stronger force than nature in shaping a person’s character.

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 Truman Capote’s narrative novel, In Cold Blood, Capote uses many different rhetorical strategies to illustrate an attitude that he has towards the character in his book. Specifically, amid the passage from pages 132 and 133, Capote writes about Perry’s life prior to committing the mass murder of the Clutter family. Capote, through his sympathetic tone, shows the readers that although Perry participated in a terrible act, the struggles during his early life should lessen the responsibility of Perry himself. Throughout this passage, Capote uses many different techniques and styles of rhetoric to show his elegiac and sympathetic attitude towards Perry Smith.

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.

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.

Through his numerous short stories, fiction novels, and even nonfiction novels, Truman Capote has notably been considered one of America’s most prominent literary writers of the twentieth century. The numerous conflicts in which Capote dealt with in the earlier parts of his life led him to procure solace in writing (McMillan). Emerging as a prolific author who was commonly known for his excellent usage of prose, Capote came to publish the notorious nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, in 1966. During Capote’s era, Southern Gothicism, a literary genre associated with dark and grotesque themes, increasingly prevailed (Bjerre). Capote’s novel became an atypical work in the genre, though, as he transformed a work of literary nonfiction into what seemed as though a “factional” piece-- a true novel in which incorporated fictional elements of Southern Gothicism (“Slouching Toward Popularity). Within the novel, Capote intricately details the Clutter family murder executed by Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. By doing so, he was able to successfully incorporate elements of Southern gothicism within the novel. Through the analysis of the damaged characters within the novel, the criminality involved in the Clutter murder, and the violence of the murder itself, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood not only fit the Southern Gothic genre, but ultimately came to revolutionize the nonfiction novel, thus proving its deserved standing in the literary canon.

“This endless policy of appeal — to such a degree that a person can be eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years under a sentence of capital punishment — it becomes, in effect, an extreme, unusual, and cruel punishment”. Truman Capote illustrate this quote about the death penalty as a whole and explains that the artistic merit and the value of it and how it can cause ineffective results and thats pointless for the matter of shake. It also doesn’t show us the bigger picture of it and rather it cause us to not think of other in need. In the fiction crime novel “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote. Capote convey the audience by his rhetorical devices in his novel in order to achieve his purpose and overall message. Capote’s writing style that he illustrates in the novel is to show that the death penalty is cruel and ineffective by the characters Richard Hickock and Perry Smith who were sentenced to the death penalty when Dick and Perry are accused and sentenced by the murder of four members of the Clutter Family. He does this by the conflict over the death penalty in which one is sentenced to death by because of their actions resulted in the action of a capital disfigurement. Capote true goals of his famous fiction crime novel “In Cold Blood” is to reach out to the audience over the insight of a criminal mind and furthers the idea of the ineffective though on the death penalty by the means of rhetorical devices corresponding imagery, tone, and Capote’s writing style.