How Truman Capote Controls His Readers Minds
Although in Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, the author is illustrating the points of view of Holcomb, Dick, and Perry after the murder of the Clutter family, he moreso aims to exploit the devastation felt by the community; therefore, he emphasizes the suddenness, sadness, and pain experienced by a loss.
In order to accomplish that purpose, Capote must capture attention to fully immerse them in the events that took place, and he executes this through creating an interesting structure at the beginning of the book. He starts his novel by establishing in the first paragraph the uninteresting nature of this area of Kansas; how it is dusty, and flat, lonely and remote: “The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’ Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the
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When he is beginning to describe the youngest Clutter, Kenyon, he mentions Kenyon’s view on girls, “[Kenyon] could not conceive of ever wanting to waste an hour on any girl that might be spent with guns, horses, tools, machinery, even a book” (Capote 39). Capote chooses to use the word “waste” -- carrying connotations of emptiness, unworthiness, and uselessness -- to show how empty of experience, and childish Kenyon still was because the doesn’t live long enough to grow up. The word waste, however, in this context, hold another meaning: wasted potential. That night, Kenyon’s life was stolen along with his potential; a potential to write his name upon the world in an ink of contributions. The word waste emanates a feeling of pain that leaves a greater impression fulfilling Capote's’ purpose of emphasizing the dark emotions experienced by
Capote tells the story in a way that makes you feel you are being told about the characters by a close acquaintance of each individual character. When you aren't hearing the voices of the characters as they tell their own stories, we hear, not the voice of an author, but the voice of a friend who knew the characters well. (Before saying her prayers, she always recorded in a diary a few occurrences... Perry didn't care what he drank... etc.)
The book, In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, was a very interesting book to read. In Cold Blood is about two men who brutally murdered the Clutter family in their own home. The crime took place on November 15, 1959 in the small town by the name of Holcomb. According to investigators, there was no motive to the crime at all. Throughout the book, the murder takes place, the investigation goes on, the trail was held and then the execution of the killers is described. The two murderers of the Clutter family were Richard Hickock, who went by the name of Dick, and Perry Smith. Throughout the book, Perry Smith was a very held back character, his upbringing wasn’t the greatest which may have played a role in the murder. Analyzing Perry Smith on his personality, his childhood and how he grew up, and what he was like before the murder will hopefully help to better understand why Perry did what he did to the Clutter family. Perry Smith was one of the cold blood killers of the Clutter family, why did it come to such a brutal ending?
In Cold Blood, a novel written by Truman Capote and published in 1966, is, though written like fiction, a true account of the murder of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. This evocative story illuminates new insights into the minds of criminals, and how society tends to act as a whole, and achieves its purpose by utilizing many of the techniques presented in Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In In Cold Blood, Capote uses symbols of escape and American values, and recurring themes of egotism and family to provide a new perspective on crime and illustrate an in-depth look at why people do the things they do.
Capote transitions next into a reflective and somewhat didactic tone in the second chapter. The author begins to give the reader a more in-depth understanding of every character's situation and opinion. This chapter has a sequence of interviews with the townspeople which better illustrates the public ...
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.
We see a prosperous environment with “plentiful natural-gas resources,” “good-looking establishment[s],” and “born gamblers.” The writer shocks the reader by this severely dichotomous picture. Through that, the audience is kept “on their toes” eagerly waiting for any acute surprises this village might bring. This contrast serves the writer’s purpose by highlighting the differences of both the insider and outsider perspectives. Those same ‘lazy’ villagers are now successful businessmen, those banks that were almost falling to the ground are now flourishing with great amounts of wealth, and those institutions that were crumbling down to the floor are now top-tier schools. The change in perspective also highlights that the villagers are modest, close-knit, and isolationists. The like their village the way it is and so they shun away any outside intervention. They are also smart and thoughtful. Being in the midst of the Great Depression in the early 30s, they have kept this low-profile of seeming poverty and disgrace. They have relied entirely on their own resources to get out of the financial crisis (implying that they had suffered from it in the first place). The writer through showing this contrast is confessing a misstep that he committed when he first came to the village. A mistake that we, as his readers, were also made to commit: the faux pas of assumption. Capote when he first came down to the village was fooled by the concealing ornament. His whole two first paragraphs are nothing but a testament to the villagers’ ability: a pat on the back, a congratulation, an acknowledgment... The villagers are, in the writer’s eyes, masters of disguise. To report on their art as genuinely and as accurately as possible, he took us through a drawn-out description of both the outside and inside perspectives. It was all for the goal of giving their masterpiece the justice it
In 1966, Truman Capote published the novel In Cold Blood that pierced the boundaries of literary genres, as he narrated the events of the 1959 Clutter family massacre in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas and the quest that took place afterwards through the perspectives both the murderers and those looking for them. As Capote bends these genre normalities, he ventures with the killers and the detectives and describes the murderers’ lives in-depth to further characterize Dick Hickock and Perry Smith--their psychological states and the possible contributing factors to their undeniable personality disorders. The two killers are ultimately diagnosed by a mental health professional with mental illnesses rather than chronic personality disorders,
Truman Capote finds different ways to humanize the killers throughout his novel In Cold Blood. He begins this novel by explaining the town of Holcomb and the Clutter family. He makes them an honest, loving, wholesome family that play a central role in the town. They play a prominent role in everyone’s lives to create better well-being and opportunity. Capote ends his beginning explanation of the plot by saying, “The suffering. The horror. They were dead. A whole family. Gentle, kindly people, people I knew --- murdered. You had to believe it, because it was really true” (Capote 66). Despite their kindness to the town, someone had the mental drive to murder them. Only a monster could do such a thing --- a mindless beast. However,
In Cold Blood is a true account of a multiple murder case that took place in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, written by Truman Capote. Capote’s attention to detail causes the reader to gain an extreme interest in the Clutter family even though they were an ordinary family. The suspense that is a result of minimal facts and descriptive settings was an elaborate stylistic technique that gave effective results throughout the book. His ability to make this account of a horrid crime more than just a newspaper description was a great success as a base of his many literary devices, not just is great focus to small details.
1. “Then, touching the brim of his cap, he headed for home and the day’s work, unaware that it would be his last.” (page 15, paragraph 1)
The disruption of an all-American society plays a key factor in In Cold Blood because of the effect it has on the story. In Holcomb, Kansas, the community’s order is disrupted through the murdering of the Clutter family. “Nevertheless, when the community lost the ...
In Cold Blood tells an exact story of the murder of the clutter family that occurred in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. It consists of Mr. and Mrs. Clutter and their two teenage children, Kenyon and Nancy, and the events that lead the killers to murder. The family was brutally killed, without any apparent reasons, by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. The family was found shot to death, with very little items missing from the home. Capote read about the crime in The New York Times real soon after it had happened, and before the killers were caught, he began his work in Kansas, interviewing the people of Holcomb and doing extensive research with the help of his friend Harper Lee. Dick and Perry got away with the murders, because of the lack of clues and no personal connections with the murdered family. Perry Smith is a loner, a psychic cripple, almost from birth an outcast from society. Capote insists the reader’s sympathy for Perry Smith from the outset: Comparing him to wounded animals; described as a frightened “creature” than as a human being responsible for his actions (Hollowell 82). So much suffering could be taken and given by a single youthful human...
In Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, the Clutter family’s murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, are exposed like never before. The novel allows the reader to experience an intimate understanding of the murderer’s pasts, thoughts, and feelings. It goes into great detail of Smith and Hickock’s pasts which helps to explain the path of life they were walking leading up to the murder’s, as well as the thought’s that were running through their minds after the killings.
The main purpose of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is to offer insight into the minds of the murderers of the Clutter family, Dick and Perry. However, asking an audience to be open-minded about men who have committed such heinous crimes is no easy task. Capote instead methodically and rather artfully combines imagery, parallel structure, and perspective in two separate passages found between pages 107-113 to contribute to his characterization of Perry and Dick where the former is deserving of sympathy and the latter, disgust.
In the nonfiction novel, “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote, the author tells a story of the murderers and victims of a slaughter case in Holcomb, Kansas. Instead of writing a book on the murder case as a crime report, the author decides to write about the people. The people we learn about are the killers, Dick and Perry, and the murdered family, the Clutters. The author describes how each family was and makes the portrayals of Dick and Perry’s family different from the Clutters.The portrayal of the Clutters and of Dick and Perry’s families, was used to describe what the American Dream was for each character. In the beginning we learn about what type of family the Clutters were and how they represented the American Dream for the people of Holcomb.