In Cold Blood Rhetorical Analysis

7. In the opening passage, Capote describes the town of Holcomb where four murders take place. In at least two paragraphs, analyze how Capote uses at least two rhetorical strategies to convey the tone of the novel and its setting.

One rhetorical strategy developed from the opening passage and carried on throughout the novel is the detachment of the narrator. By not including any mention of who is telling the story, the novel maintains a journalistic nature and allows for the audience to make their own judgments. Moreover, the city of Holcomb becomes just an average place that neither the narrator or audience has any relation to due to the repeated inclusion of understatements, allowing the plot of the novel to pervade deeper into the senses

as a series of events that could happen anywhere. The novel begins objectively with a description of Holcomb “on the high wheat plains of western Kansas,” the average small American town, with no inclusion of who is giving the description (Capote 3). Subsequently, the style becomes that of a reporter, and this fosters a tonal sense of impersonal grief.

In Capote’s words, “for the nonfiction-novel form to be entirely successful, the author should not appear in the work...the I-I-I intrudes when it really shouldn’t” (Capote, “The Story”). In Cold Blood is an accurate representation of his opinion, and with no ‘I’ from the narrator, the tone continues to remain impartial but with appropriate emotional additions among various portions of the text. Understatements also contribute to a withdrawn effect and more universal reach. For example, when speaking of Holcomb, it is said: “Not that there is much to see” and “And that, really, is all” (Capote 3-4). A general description is given as the narrator’s under-emphasis reminds the audience that while they are being given the actual facts, the murders truly could have occurred anywhere. The physical setting is a successful farm in Kansas, but with rhetoric, the setting is every town in America. Initially, the audience may expect greater excitement from a town where four murders took place, yet Capote deals with this accordingly in order to emphasize Holcomb’s mediocrity, simultaneously increasing the irony of

a world where Holcomb’s perfect family can be murdered. Detachment and understatement work together in the novel’s introduction, building a story whose impersonal tone and generic setting can make a greater impact upon the audience.
Capote also utilizes specific syntax in order to augment the thoughtful nature of the tone and aid his credibility in the description of the setting.

Foremost, the use of dashes is seen greatly throughout the first few pages of the novel, adding supplemental information that makes the narrator appear more knowledgeable and incites a sense of ‘pausing’ to think. In one instance, Capote writes, “they are outdoor folk of very varied stock—German, Irish, Norwegian, Mexican, Japanese,” and in another, “few Americans—in fact, few Kansans—had ever heard of Holcomb” (Capote 4-5). While not vital to the text, the information separated by the dashes adds character and develops the narrator as someone who is both informed about the events of the Clutter murders and mindful of including every detail. The dashes cause the novel to take on a thorough tone; concurrently, they further develop where the novel is taking place and add credibility to this setting. The audience is left with a greater understanding. Additionally, parentheses are used for the same purpose, such as with, “(pronounced Ar-kan-sas),” “(Holcomb, like all the rest of Kansas, is ‘dry’),” and “(the annual average is eighteen inches)” (Capote 3-4). Capote is meticulous in developing the scene of the story, both through tone and setting. The audience is given seemingly random knowledge about the annual rainfall in Holcomb, but this knowledge of the setting is purposeful, not in the explicit use of fact but instead in

giving the audience a full picture of Holcomb as the average American town, statistics and all. Capote’s rhetorical inclusion of dashes and parentheses from the start of the novel prepares the audience for a thoughtful account of what truly happened in the town of Holcomb, and it also incites in the audience a tendency to apply the lessons of In Cold Blood to a setting that goes beyond Holcomb.