Analysis of the Author's Writing Techniques in Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Capote's In Cold Blood

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou is an autobiography with a fictional aspect that depicts the life of Maya herself from the time she was eight to sixteen. The in-depth stories reveal the struggle and hardships she faced growing up. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is a true account of the murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas on November 15, 1959. The book gives a more thorough look at the details of the family and the killers, the book is written to take the events and elevate them into a story, enabling the event to transcend their specific historical moment. Capote assembles the facts and perspectives about the Clutter murder into a narrative, creating that feeling of a fiction book.

Maya Angelou’s book reads as if it were a fiction, and to get that accomplished she used many different conventions of fiction including characterization, the expository style of description, theme, sequence, and first person narration. The characterization in the book is crucial, it enables the readers to truly comprehend each individual personality and get to know the characters more in depth to a very familiar point. When introducing the readers to a new character, even the minor ones, Angelou gives much detail to them. For example “Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated.” (pg.173) Not only does Angelou provide facts about people, she also gives many descriptions about the things, people, and events around her. This permits the reader to see what Angelou saw, this unique practice is what sets the tone for the fictional aspect of the book. A normal memory written in a...

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...he murder has taken place. The out of place events make the novel flow, and the references to past events allow the reader to more easily comprehend the storyline, this style also provides suspense in the form of foreshadowing. Setting was another major theme included in the book, essentially the whole book is set in Holcomb and many descriptions are made about the town: “The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’ . . . The land is flat, the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.” (pg.3) Capote uses many different conventions to have his book that is written as a non-fiction read as fiction, and when combined created the illusion of a fiction book.