Analysis Of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

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Crime is seen by the public opinion is unorthodox as well as cruel, in turn the public believes that only sick and twisted people from horrid backgrounds are capable of committing crime. Novelist and journalist Truman Capote writes in his book, In Cold Blood, about the Holcomb, Kansas murders of the Clutter family. The general public believed that the criminals were insane, but Capote wanted a deeper insight into the story by analyzing the crime and the murderers. Through embedding himself in his characters, fiction-style nonfiction, irony, foreshadowing, repetition, and cinematic style of writing, Truman Capote portrays crime and evil as normal human emotions that are poorly expressed in unwanted or hostile situations. As a young child, Truman Capote was plagued with distress. His father left and his mother was an alcoholic. He was neglected until he was adopted by his stepfather and attended several different schools while he was
Anger and frustration can also be expressed in negative ways, such as any form of crime including murder. An example of this is a man and his wife are arguing; he becomes enraged and murders his wife in the heat of the disagreement. This man has a clean record; he has never committed a murder or crime of any kind before “Statistical trends would project that he won’t murder again” (Samenow 2). This man is not a “monster,” psychopath, or a freak of nature; he is a normal person who reacted in an entirely wrong way to a hostile and stressful situation. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he rationalized the crime with his emotions and feelings rather than his morals. “Evil is in all of us, really, but it’s how it’s expressed” that separates criminals and law abiding citizens (Prattini). The correlation between this and Capote is that he is portraying the murders of the Clutter family in the same way: a crime of misguided

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