In the novel, In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote, there is an abundant amount of character development with the two murderers, Perry Smith and Richard (Dick) Hickock. Capote, as an author, has the ability to include or omit whatever details he wishes. With this power, an author can sway the reader’s opinion towards whatever he wants it to be. The power of manipulation, as used by authors, can be used to not only show bias but to kick start the creation of emotions that are contrary to the feelings of the public. This can be clearly seen in the description of the events that took place on the night that Smith and Hickock murdered four members of the Clutter family. In this section, Capote talks about both men having given a statement but only includes the details of Smith’s …show more content…
description.
The details that Smith gave the detectives were more than likely biased towards him being more innocent of the acts than Hickock and manipulates the reader into feeling a level of sympathy for a man convicted of at least two murders. Smith’s report also shows him to allegedly be moral and compassionate, while describing Hickock as cold, calculated and animalistic.
The details included by Smith effectively show him to be the more compassionate man of the murderers. In Smith’s statement there are many details, vividly described, that show the reader the compassion in his heart. One of the first acts of kindness is shown when they find Mr. Clutter, “… I thought that Dick was ready to smash him, so I said, “Dick. Listen to me. There’s somebody awake upstairs”(238). By distracting Dick, Smith effectively saves Mr. Clutter from Dicks wrath and changes Dicks focus from him to another problem at hand. By talking about how readily
Hickock wanted to inflict pain on Mr. Clutter, Smith tries to manipulate his “audience” into feeling more hatred for Hickock. By including this detail, Capote is causing the reader to see Perry as a caring individual. Capote also includes, “I didn’t feel I ought to ask him to stretch out on the cold floor, so I dragged the mattress box over, flattened it, and told him to lay down”(241). Another act included is, “Just as I was leaving he (Kenyon) had a coughing fit, so I stuffed a pillow under his head. Then I turned off the lights”(242). Both of these acts show that Smith did everything he could to make the family comfortable even though he knew the plan was to leave no witnesses, even though he knew that the family would be dead before morning. Most killers wouldn’t bother making their victims final moments, however terrifying, comfortable. One of the last acts of compassion shown by Mr. Smith is when he stops Hickock from raping Nancy, yet again showing that he has morals, however minute, that he sticks too. All these deeds included in one passage causes the reader to view Smith as human. A man that cares about others and has compassion in his heart. The details included in the telling of the murder also cause the reader to view Hickock as cold and animalistic. The hate for Hickock is fueled later when Perry tells the detectives, “And then, says Dick, after we find the safe we cut their throats”(239). By implying that the idea to murder the family was Hickocks, both Smith and Capote are showing him to be cold and uncaring when it comes to human life. This idea is reinforced further when he tries to rape Nancy, “She was in the bed and was sitting on the edge of it talking to her. I stopped that…”(242). Many people view pedophiles and rapists as animals or worse. By including this specific detail Capote characterizes Hickock and turns the reader against him. The only acts carried out by Hickock are immoral or ¬¬_______. Also, by using simple sentences to describe his deeds, Capote is implying that there was no further reason or underlying complexity to his deeds, he merely did it because he felt like it. This is also shown when Smith states, “The glory of having everyone at his mercy, that’s what excited him”(239). This shows the reader Hickcock was adlibbing his act and that he acted upon impulses as they happened instead of calculating his moves as he went as he had when planning out the “score of a lifetime”. By manipulating the reader with these details, Capote is able to project Smith as being moral and innocent. While Perry allegedly killed the same amount of people that Hickock did, he was the more compassionate of the two. When he cut Mr. Clutters throat, he describes it as, ‘…I didn’t realize what id done till I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming under water”(244). This description almost makes it seem like Smith was not responsible for the murder but that he had not been in control of his actions. It causes him to be seen as innocent of his crimes, like his body had committed the murders but his mind had been trapped, unable to do anything but, “see how it ends”. This section is used by Capote to manipulate the readers views of the murderers and cause different emotions towards the two men. Capote shifts the blame onto Hickock, but even though the reader feels sympathy for Smith, they also know that there needs to be swift justice for the Clutter family
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.
In Cold Blood is the true story of a multiple murder that rocked the small town of Holcomb, Kansas and neighboring communities in 1959. It begins by introducing the reader to an ideal, all-American family, the Clutters; Herb (the father), Bonnie (the mother), Nancy (the teenage daughter), and Kenyon (the teenage son). The Clutters were prominent members of their community who gained admiration and respect for their neighborly demeanors.
In the novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the author skillfully orders information and articulates his word choice in order to successfully tell the story. Capote chooses to include certain events before others to show the reader the development of the case caused a change in the overall feelings of characters such as Alvin Dewey. Alvin, the detective who desperately searched for the Clutter killers reads, “on the first page of the Kansas City Star, a headline he had long awaited: Die On Rope For Bloody Crime,” which portrays to the reader that he was relieved after months to know that they were sentenced to death. (337) By including the word choice “he had long awaited” the reader may assume that he is pleased by this outcome. (337) However,
Imagine staring at a breathtaking landscape, where it feels like time could go on forever. Now, imagine being late for an important event where it feels like the clock will not stop ticking and the numbers move with every glance. With the sentiments of these two emotions in mind, Capote exemplifies both of the essences of these situations throughout In Cold Blood through his use of syntax. He can take the reader through his long and drawn-out syntax to describe settings or characters extensively, creating a timeless and descriptive scene; however, he also creates a change of pace at the climactic moments of the book by modifying his sentences to become shorter. Therefore, the syntax that Truman Capote uses throughout In Cold Blood is used to change the tone and pace of the story to help elevate the significance of the plot.
In In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the characters Smith and Hickock, while both criminals involved in the killing of the Clutters, are portrayed quite differently. It is clear that Capote favors Smith. Throughout the book, Smith is written in a way that could incite sympathy within the reader while Hickock is shown to be a remorseless, irredeemable killer. Nevertheless, there are moments in which Smith seems as if he doesn’t deserve sympathy, such as when he shows no remorse for his actions, but overall, Capote spends a majority of the book humanizing him while simultaneously antagonizing Hickock. Some could argue that this story is not established as that of victims and villains but that it focuses more on whatever is relevant to telling the
Richard Mulcaster, a British instructor of English, once wrote, “Nature makes the boy toward, nurture sees him forward.” Mulcaster recognizes that both genetic and environmental factors determine the type of a person one becomes. Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood gives the reader an opportunity to see prime examples of how nature and nurture influence one’s character. Capote’s novel, In Cold Blood introduces the reader to two men; Richard Eugene Hickock known as Dick throughout the novel, and Perry Edward Smith whose lives of crime are almost identical; although both Perry and Richard come from very humble backgrounds, their childhood particularly their family life, has very little in common. It is not until later in their lives that we begin to see similarities between the two men. Despite their differences, Perry’s upbringing and Dick’s genetic disposition allow both men to share a disregard for life, which becomes apparent on the night they gruesomely burglarized and murdered four innocent members of the Clutter family.
In this day and age the term “murder” is coined as a word used in everyday language, albeit fifty years ago in the [rural] heartland of America, that word evoked emotion out of the entire town’s population. Prior to writing In Cold Blood, Truman Capote had written several pieces that lead him to writing a piece of literature that would infuse fiction and nonfiction, thus In Cold Blood was created, albeit after six years of research (“Truman” 84). "Truman Capote is one of the more fascinating figures on the American literary landscape, being one of the country's few writers to cross the border between celebrity and literary acclaim…He contributed both to fiction and nonfiction literary genres and redefined what it meant to join the otherwise separate realms of reporting and literature." ___ In Cold Blood takes place in the rural heartland in America, capturing the lives of the Clutter family in the days preceding their murder. The story shifts to the murderers, Dick Hickock, Perry Smith, and the lives of the men prior to the events that ultimately unfold in the murder of the Clutters, although the actual events of the murder are not revealed until later in the story through Perry’s flashbacks. At this point of the story the narration switches between the fugitives and the investigation lead by Detective Alvin Dewey of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Truman Capote's novel In Cold Blood delineates justice in order to depict the disruption of an all-American society.
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.
In the book “In Cold Blood” we meet Perry Edward Smith one of the men accused of killing the Clutter family. Perry is a unique man for how he see the world and how the world sees him. Although the townspeople and those who had heard of the murder only saw Parry as a murder. There is however one man who sees Perry more than he appeared to be and that man was Truman Capote. Perry had an interesting life from how he was raised, becoming friends with Richard Eugene Hickock, to the murder of the Clutter family, all the way to Capote writing about him and the trail he and Dick must face. It was Capote who brought the idea that Perry was not a bad person persa but rather he made a mistake that has caused him to spend the rest of his life behind the bars of a jail.
These two men, both coming from different backgrounds, joined together and carried out a terrible choice that rendered consequences far worse than they imagined. Living under abuse, Perry Smith never obtained the necessary integrity to be able to pause and consider how his actions might affect other people. He matured into a man who acts before he thinks, all due to the suffering he endured as a child. Exposed to a violent father who did not instill basic teachings of life, Smith knew nothing but anger and misconduct as a means of responding to the world. He knew no other life. Without exposure to proper behavior or responsible conduct, he turned into a monster capable of killing an entire family without a blink of remorse. In the heat of the moment, Perry Smith slaughtered the Clutter family and barely stopped to take a breath. What could drive a man to do this in such cold blood? The answer lies within his upbringing, and how his childhood experiences shaped him to become the murderer of a small family in Holcomb, Kansas. ¨The hypothesis of unconscious motivation explains why the murderers perceived innocuous and relatively unknown victims as provocative and thereby suitable targets for aggression.¨ (Capote 191). ¨But it is Dr. Statten´s contention that only the first murder matters psychologically, and that when
By the time Smith and Hickock are hanged, Smith is portrayed in the role of misunderstood good guy in the good-guy/bad-guy literary device. Capote was not apposed to the death penalty, he used the double handing as the dramatic ending to In Cold Blood. Thought out the third section of In Cold Blood. Whenever Hickock is contemplating or gagging in a sexual act, Smith reacts in an angry or jealous way. Capote repeatedly interprets Smith’s actions towards Hickock as showing his morality, where Hickock is voiced as having none.
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.
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 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.
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.