In an excerpt from “In Cold Blood”, Truman Capote writes as an outside male voice irrelevant to the story, but has either visited or lived in the town of Holcomb. In this excerpt Capote utilized rhetoric to no only describe the town but also to characterize it in order to set a complete scene for the rest of the novel. Capote does this by adapting and forming diction, imagery, personification, similes, anaphora, metaphors, asyndeton, and alliteration to fully develop Holcomb not only as a town, but as a town that enjoys its isolation.
Capote begins the novel with a complete description of not only the town as a whole, but also the people and landmark buildings, which allows Capote to characterize the town completely. In the first line of the passage Capote uses the rhetoric of diction and imagery, to not only expose the surroundings to the audiences, but also to begin the higher and implicit meanings of his words. “Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area”, this quote from the passage provides the implicit understanding that the land surrounding this town is unkempt, and lacks human interference. The “high wheat plains” act as a barrier to the outside world that those who live in the village, want to stay isolated from. The ending of the same line uses diction to explicitly show that this one little area is divorced from other communities. “Area that other Kansans call “out there””, shows that even to people who live in Kansas, which Americans consider “out there” can call this town “out there” providing exemplary evidence to Capote’s purpose of proving the seclusion of the village. “The countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert- clear air”, shows the use of diction and implicit meaning. ...
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...to one of mystery. The one word “Until” in the beginning of the paragraph changes the entire tone, replacing content with sadness and terror. Using anaphora, Capote reviews that fact that “like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks” people never stop there, people don’t settle down in Holcomb, it’s a place of generations, not new comers.
Truman Capote understood that using the right words and the right time can persuade readers to not only think as you think, but also make the audiences think deeper into the meanings of the words put in front of them. Using various rhetoric devices Capote sparked insight into Holcomb just by describing simple landmark buildings and the surroundings of the town. In one page the audience can completely grasp the concepts and emotions of the village.
And finally, as the story concludes, you feel through Capote's careful presentation of the facts, that we are participants of the trial ourselves. We experience the witnesses testimony only when the jurors and spectators do so themselves. Having the author reserve vital information so that we learn only what the community learns, when they learn it, offers the opportunity for us to experience genuine emotions as the events unfold.
One of the most notable rhetorical devices used within the book is a metaphor. Capote uses this rhetoric several times throughout the book, each time revealing something significant about the characters, specifically Perry. Perry has a dream where he’s in the jungles of Africa gazing upon a tree: “Jesus, it smells bad, that tree; it kind of makes me sick, the way it stinks. Only, it’s beautiful to look at---it has blue leaves and diamonds hanging everywhere. Diamonds like oranges. That’s why I’m there---to
Truman Capote uses a simile in order for the readers to visualize what the scenery looks like. He compares the country to a lake using the word “as.”
In this story he gives the murderers their own sense of self and showed how they choose to deal with their lives. This also lets readers know that each person was different and that neither of them truly knew how to “be normal”, as most people would say, and live their own lives without causing trouble. Pushing the reader to form an opinion, biased or not, with the information that was given about each character by Capote. Capote through this all, did a great job of bringing the murderers to life for his reader and sharing the stories of each person that may not have been said by the media or anything else that gives people information about the world that is around them. Giving these characters lives and experiences were great parts to the story and is what ultimately gave the book its
This passage when Capote begins to introduce Perry more in depth. From his childhood to later on in his life. Perry’s way of life as a child was a tough one, in which his mother put him in a “catholic orphanage. The one where the Black Widows were always at me. Hitting me. Because of wetting the bed…They hated me, too.” Capote’s use of short sentence syntax creates the effect of emphasizing the horrible and dramatic conditions Perry had to live with. Also, the nuns of the orphanage are described as “Black Widows,” a metaphor, to make it seem like it was truly terrible. The color black associates with death and when metaphorically used to describe a nun, it creates sympathy for Perry. Later in the passage, capote creates a short narrative of Perry’s experience in war. “Perry, one balmy evening in wartime 1945…” The storytelling helps understand more about Perry in the way he thinks and acts. The atmosphere of this passage is a sad mood. It talks about the terrible childhood and early life of Perry. It is clear that no one ever cared for Perry and it affected him dramatically.
Capote used pathos in this book mostly to make the reader sad or feel sympathy for a character. In the beginning of the bo...
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 uses different voices to tell the story, creating an intimacy between the readers and the murders, the readers and the victims, and all the other players in this event—townspeople, investigators, friends of the family. This intimacy lead...
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 Holcomb, a village located in the southern west of Kansas, transformed into a well-known community after the gruesome murders of the Clutters. “Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans, in fact, few Kansans-had ever heard of Holcomb”(5). The dash makes a sudden pause emphasizing the effect the murders of the Clutters had on the village by describing the setting. In that quote, Capote uses the dash to break the thought since, at the beginning, Capote clarifies that few people knew where Holcomb was located and then interrupts his own thought by using the dash to clarify that few Kansans ever heard of Holcomb. Therefore, by using the dashes, the setting is implied and described as an isolated lonely place, in which everyone knew each other, until “mid-November of 1959” when the murders occurred. “Since the announcement of Hickock’s confession on Sunday evening, newsmen of every style had assembled in Garden City: representatives of the major wire services, photographers, newsreel and television cameramen, reporters...
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.
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.
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.
Capote lived a life of stardom and luxury, but years of dishonesty caught up to him. After Capote’s prime, he became nothing. He was merely a pathetic, washed-out author. His final writing sent his swans away from him; the boy was abandoned once more (Brock). He came envious of other authors. After Answered Prayers, his life was filled with shame and rage (Long 109). The downfall of Capote’s life caused him further
Gerald Clarke, ed. Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote. New York: Random House,