Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

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The most important books to a person are the ones that leave a lasting impact. Books that people can reflect back on and cite as a defining influence in their life. Truman Capote's In Cold Blood confirms the importance of reading a story with its own lifelong message, the consequences that result from one’s actions and their effect on a population. Readers learn of the magnitude their decisions hold and how their choices affect those around them. CONCLUDING SENTENCE. The emphasis Capote places on decisions begins early with the introduction of Dick Hickcock. Dick Hickock has a loving family and a bright future as he himself writes, “I had a lot of toys when I was little. My dad was a hard worker....” before continuing, “I got offers from

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    Capote’s structure throughout the entire book created an excellent backbone to tell the two alternating perspectives of the book that is of the victims; the clutter family and the murders; Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. This allowed Capote to not have a bias towards the accounts being told. The pattern of victims then the murderers causes an attractive puzzle where the reader collects an amount of information leading to the climax of the actual slaughter. He actually contin...

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  • Analysis of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

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    Capote tells the story in a way that makes you feel you are being told about the characters by a close acquaintance of each individual character. When you aren't hearing the voices of the characters as they tell their own stories, we hear, not the voice of an author, but the voice of a friend who knew the characters well. (Before saying her prayers, she always recorded in a diary a few occurrences... Perry didn't care what he drank... etc.)

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  • Word Choice In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

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    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,

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  • Brief Analysis of Some Parts of Truman Capote´s In Cold Blood

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    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.

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  • Truman Capote's In Cold Blood: Comparison of Book and Movie

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    and at one point, had a gun pointed to his head. Also there appears to be

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  • In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

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    Truman Capote establishes respect and trust in what he writes from with audience, ethos, through the use of an extensive variety of facts and statistics, logos. Capote uses so many dates, times, and other facts about the crime committed in the book and the subsequent investigation that the reader has to believe what the author is writing. The use of all these facts shows that Capote did his research and he interviewed, questioned, and obtained the opinions of every person that even slightly important to crime itself and the investigation/trial. The author is obviously very meticulous when it comes to dates and times; every important event in the book has a date and sometimes even a time of day to go with it. Some examples of dates included were the day of the murders (November 15th, 1959), dates of when Perry and Dick were here or there (December 31th, 1959- a small restaurant in Texas or noon on December 25th, 1959- beach in Miami Florida), date when the two criminals were apprehended (January 1st, 1960), dates when they were brought from this prison to that one and finally when they were brought to death’s row (April, 1960). Other small facts are also used by the author, like facts about the criminal’s early lives or experiences that they had, which could only have been obtained through extensive interviews with Perry and Dick. The use of all these logos by Capote establishes strong ethos, showing the reader that the author did more than enough research to show that he has the knowledge to write a whole book on the subject.

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  • Psychological Trauma in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

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    Brian Conniff's article, "Psychological Accidents: In Cold Blood and Ritual Sacrifice," explains how Truman Capote's nonfiction novel demonstrates the psychological trauma that the murderers and the townspeople of Holcomb face after the murders of the Clutter family. Conniff begins his article by stating that in the last twenty-five years imprisonment and execution has reached an all-time high level of obsession among the American public. Since this type of violence has been so normalized it is rarely properly understood (1). With this in mind, prison literature has continually suggested that "the most fortified barriers are not the physical walls and fences between the prison, and the outside world; the most fortified barriers are the psychological walls between the preoccupations of everyday life . . .and the conscious realization that punishment is the most self-destructive kind of national addiction" (Conniff 1).

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  • Analysis of Truman Capote´s In Cold Blood

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    Capote transitions next into a reflective and somewhat didactic tone in the second chapter. The author begins to give the reader a more in-depth understanding of every character's situation and opinion. This chapter has a sequence of interviews with the townspeople which better illustrates the public ...

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  • Narrative Style of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    662 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

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  • The Nature Debate In Truman Capote's Cold Blood

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    In the book in Cold Blood Dick Hickock is a good example of the nature debate presented in Capote's novel. Mr Hickock was one who was brought up in a good family, with parents who loved and cared him. It is mentioned a couple several times that he was talented and gifted in sports and his parents loved him very much. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with his childhood, but he grows up to be an cold-hearted killer and criminal. After Dick Hickock was told he wouldn’t be able to attend college his whole world flipped upside down. Mr. Hickock said when he was talking to agent Nye says, “I guess Dick resented it, not getting to go to college” (166). In the story clearly states Dick wanted to go to college so badly, that when he didn’t

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  • Book Review Of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

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    However, as the storyline moves forth, Capote alters his use of “meanwhile, back at the ranch” technique (in which two stories go in parallel, when one reaches peak interest, storyline switches to the other, and vise versa) to a good section of a book dedicated to Perry. In Perry’s time in the limelight, readers start to feel sympathetic towards the person they hated moments ago. There are numerous ways readers could interpret Capote’s intent. I believe Capote wrote In Cold Blood in such a way to convey that people are often misled into firm assumptions on situations they do not remotely apprehend, the vulnerability in the liability of men and women. It isn’t in Capote’s literary techniques this is displayed, but in the conversion of his

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