In Cold Blood Analysis Essay

Analysis

The close reading passage I chose from the novel In Cold Blood is taken from the page 22, and it contains 343 pages in total. The context of this passage is that, the two murderers, Perry and Dick, are about to commit the crime that was planned by them against clutter’s family and steal their money. This passage begins with Perry getting in the car, turns around to the back of Dick’s car and views the shotgun, fishing knife, and a hunting vest fully packed with shells, this description that Capote draws, foreshadows and gives the reader a clue of a crime that is really going to happen and Clutter’s family is going to die.

Up until this point, Capote gave the reader detailed descriptions and images of each character

The way he described Clutter’s family was clear, talking about their daily life style. But for the murderers Perry and Dick, Capote draws their image in the story to be more mysterious rather than ruthless. As far as the reader read, they gather clues about how the crime is going to take place and the plan of it, besides learning that Perry and Dick are assassins and are going to murder an innocent family, but then Capote changes the reader’s thinking. He talks about Perry’s dream of binge a guitar playing nightclub singer or to play his guitar in front of a crowd. This makes the reader mystified and hard to believe that Perry is going to commit a murder. In this passage, Perry’s first concern when he turned to back seat of the car is to check his guitar and describe it by saying “It was an old Gibson guitar, sandpapered and waxed to a honey-yellow finish”, but then he described the weapons and tools he sees in the car that will be used for the crime. The fact that

I believe this is important because in this section, their plan for committing the crime transformed from being just words into actions. When Perry turned around to the back of Dick’s car and said “a shotgun…fishing knife…. hunting vest fully packed with shells”, it shocked me a lot. I know that the murder is going to take place eventually but I did not know when or how. Due that, it was very interesting to read since Capote used a lot of details to describe the characterizations of Perry, Dick and Clutter’s family and left out the details of the actual crime that will be committed near in the future. The way that Capote uses to describe the events, makes the reader do a mental image and imagine the view. His way creates sense of curiosity and suspense within me and it leaves me feeling anxious to learn more about the story despite the fact that I wasn’t particularly interested in the book itself. I mostly enjoy various applications of rhetorical strategies, but unfortunately the first section of the novel had only a little explanation of the crime events. As the story keeps on going, the author begins to get into more details about the personal lives of both Dick and Perry. The author described Dick as an independent man, while Perry had a rough time