Harper Lee & In Cold Blood This lesson will examine the impact of Harper Lee on Truman Capote 's true-crime novel, 'In Cold Blood. ' Lee helped her childhood friend with much of the research for the book, although she was not credited when the book was published. In many ways, writers Harper Lee and Truman Capote made an odd couple. She was shy and reclusive and only wrote two novels in her lifetime. He was a prolific writer who embraced his celebrity status and lived a life of jet-setting glamour. Yet the two were good friends for years, having met at age 5 as neighbors in Monroeville, Alabama. Lee would prove indispensable to Capote in the research of his most famous book, In Cold Blood. Despite her help, however, Capote gave her no credit …show more content…
However, it was his old buddy Harper who helped him make this idea work. Let 's take a look at the role Lee played in shaping this classic work. Wooing the Locals In Cold Blood might have been a nonstarter if not for Lee 's ability to convince the locals to take her friend seriously. Truman Capote did not make a great first impression on the conservative Kansan townsfolk. The prosecutor from the Clutter case, Duane West, remembers him as an 'oddball ' who was 'hard to take. ' Capote cut an eccentric figure, with his high-pitched voice and flamboyant clothes. He was openly homosexual, a lifestyle that was not tolerated in such a conservative Midwestern town. Enter Lee. She had an easy way with the locals and an understanding of farmers and small-town Americans. She did much of the legwork, knocking on doors and stopping people out and about, asking if they would be willing to talk about the Clutter case. Once she won the people over, they were willing to give Capote a second chance. Thanks to Lee 's persistence and relatability, Capote was able to get important interviews from the people most affected by the Clutter …show more content…
Lee traveled with Capote to Kansas and helped get the locals to open up to him. She sat in on interviews and hearings, took 150 pages of notes, and also provided moral support to her friend. Despite this, Capote downplayed her contributions, and relegated her to the dedication page on his finished novel. Lee 's feelings were hurt, and as time went on, she and Capote grew apart. Recent evidence of Lee 's loyalty to Capote has surfaced with the discovery of an article on the Clutter piece that she wrote five years before In Cold Blood was published. In order not to step on Capote 's toes, Lee published the article
Capote in his book In Cold Blood set out to create an image of the murders and their motives with the use of rhetorical devices. He uses certain devices, such as diction and syntax to give each character their own distinct personality and also develops their characteristic and tendencies as a person as well. Capote also brings the characters to life with the switching of tone between them and with the things they say about themselves and events going on in the story. Another way Capote develops the reader's perception of the murderers was by the use of imagery to draw the reader a picture in their minds to what the character would look like face to face. With all of these combined he gave each murderer their own personality and views, ultimately
In the novel, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Capote uses literary devices to describe many characters. One character that is described thoroughly is the main investigator Alvin Dewey.
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.
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,
As stated, Capote frequently delved into the lives of the cold-blooded killers. He made it a point to illustrate all of the hardships that each of them chronically faced. In the beginning of the novel, Capote used his ominous tone to stir up hate toward the killers. However, by the end, his tone was completely solemn, somber, and even sorrowful. This might be to serve an underlying purpose. Perhaps Capote himself truly opposed the death penalty? Although Capote stressed so vehemently the horrors of the Clutters' cold-blooded murders, Capote was trying to convey that their murders were not the only ones committed in cold blood. He was stating that the death penalty was also a form of cold-blooded killing, one that served no other purpose besides revenge.
He lied to Perry Smith and the police for his benefits. He lied to police because he said he would writing about how the murder had impacted the community, but he was writing about how the Clutter family was killed. Capote bribed a prison warren to attain access to Perry, a man involved in the Clutter family murder case. Moreover, Capote was writing a book with getting substantial information from the two men who were accused of brutal murder of an entire family at night, but he was hiding the title from the two killers. He wanted to make them believe that his writing was about their unjust trail. In a program, he said about the title of his book was “In Cold Blood” however when Perry asked him about it, he answered that he had to come up with the title and he gave it as a title, but that was not the real title. It seems clear that Capote’s behavior was questionable on how he attained access to Perry and how he lied to h...
There are multiple speculations about why the two drifted apart. When Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird, there were rumours that Capote had wrote part, or all of it himself (Harper). These rumors were put to rest when a letter written by Capote to his aunt said he had read the draft of the story and enjoyed it, but made no mention of contributing to the writing (Block). It was also theorized that Lee may have been upset with the little credit she got for In Cold Blood, but after they became famous, their friendship was not as strong as before (Block). While Lee rejected her fame, Capote welcomed it, this division could also factor into their dispute. It was possible that Capote became jealous of Harper Lee, or just misunderstood her private lifestyle. Though, despite all the tension in their friendship, Truman Capote still largely impacted Harper Lee. In To Kill a Mockingbird Lee based some of her characters on people she knew, for example, Atticus, the protagonist, has been thought to be similar to her father. One character in the story, Dill, is said to be based on Truman Capote. In the book, Dill is the friend of Scout, the young girl narrator, similar to Capote and Lee as children
On November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family were murdered in their own house in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas in the middle of the night by two strangers looking for money that was never there. The story of the murder and its consequences has been told in the book In Cold Blood by Truman Capote as well as the movie In Cold Blood and the movie Capote. All three pieces tell the story about the family and the murderers, and all three pieces are interesting and entertaining, but it depends on every person 's interest to decide which of the three is better.
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.
In Cold Blood, a non-fiction book written by Truman Capote and published in 1966, describes profoundly the terrifying murders of the Clutter family in the city of Holcomb, Kansas. Through several years of research, Truman Capote was able to gather enough information about the murder that took place in 1959 to recreate the murder itself with a different standpoint. With no notes taken or recorded interviews, Capote was capable of retelling this event through the use of his memory only, which in his time and still today, generates some questions about whether the story can be considered to be true or not.
James). Truman and Lee were opposites; He was frail and Lee was a rough and tumble tomboy (Bio). Despite their differences, they became instant friends (Southern). She helped Capote combat his loneliness and unhappiness, which resulted in him developing a flamboyant, outgoing, and witty personality (DISC; EWB). His adventures in Monroeville were the highlights of his childhood as opposed to his life with his
In 1966, Truman Capote published the novel In Cold Blood that pierced the boundaries of literary genres, as he narrated the events of the 1959 Clutter family massacre in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas and the quest that took place afterwards through the perspectives both the murderers and those looking for them. As Capote bends these genre normalities, he ventures with the killers and the detectives and describes the murderers’ lives in-depth to further characterize Dick Hickock and Perry Smith--their psychological states and the possible contributing factors to their undeniable personality disorders. The two killers are ultimately diagnosed by a mental health professional with mental illnesses rather than chronic personality disorders,
In 1965, Truman Capote created the infamous tale known as “In Cold Blood”. The book created the illusion of fantasy while based on reality. Many people were floored at the brilliance Capote demonstrated within the pages. The book took the literary concept of a novel with the literary elements of designed scenes, characters, a story formed with an introduction, rising action, climax and resolution to the real events surrounding the murder of the Clutter family.
Michael J. Fox, a famous American actor, once said, “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” This quote connects with the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote perfectly, because family has a major role in this novel. Capote’s novel is a true account about the murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. They murdered the Clutters, a Kansas family of four. The novel takes the reader for a play-by-play account from the murderers running, all the way to the detectives catching them, and then ends with Hickock and Smith’s executions. In the novel, In Cold Blood the reader can automatically tell that family matters in each character’s life, it shapes them into the kind of person they are and how that character handles certain situations.