Truman Capote's In Cold Blood: Orb Project

792 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Narrative of cold blood truman capote

Adam Pesce Ap Lang
In Cold Blood: ORB Project
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: In Cold Blood, a 1966 book by author Truman Capote, tells the true story of the barbaric 1959 murders of a successful farmer from Holcomb, Kansas, Herbert Clutter, his wife, and two of their four children. When Capote was informed about the murder of these four innocent souls before the two selfish men were captured, he decided to travel to Kansas and write about the crime. Nelle Harper Lee, a childhood friend and fellow author, accompanied him and together they interviewed local residents and investigators assigned to the case. As a result, thousands of pages of notes were documented for Capote’s literary works. The murderers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, were arrested six weeks after the murders and after the criminals were found, tried, and convicted, Capote organized personal interviews with both Smith and Hickock. Capote portrayed Smith as the more sensitive and guilt-ridden of the two killers due to his fascination with Smith. Rumors of a relationship between Smith and Capote still linger to this day. The book was not completed until after Smith and Hickock were executed. Capote ended up spending six years dedicated to his book, which became the greatest crime seller at the time and is almost universally acknowledged as one of the best books of its type ever written.

SYNTAX: Capote uses language choices such as syntax, the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language, to make his novel effective and give his novel character. One example of syntax technique Capote uses is an observation comparing two sentences from Capote’s novel. "The Garden City representative of New York Life Insurance smiled as he watched Mr. Cl...

... middle of paper ...

...uld ever see and their eyes are scarred from the terrible events. The people of Kansas have a positive outlook on life and their future, however after these tragedies their views on the security and positivity in the world can no longer be regained. Another theme present in the book is the thought of self-image. Perry and Dick were the original starters of the killing spree. Their motivations were somewhat controlled by the way they perceived themselves, as well as the way they wanted to be perceived. After Perry's psychiatric evaluation the reader learns Perry is “overly sensitive to criticisms that others make of him, and cannot tolerate being made fun of. He is quick to sense slight or insult in things others say” (297). Both Perry and Dick wanted self-recognition causing it to be evident that both characters have serious issues with their elgo and self-esteem.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

    1333 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.)

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Imagery In Truman Capote

    808 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through the course of the book, Capote uses vivid descriptions to his advantage in order to place emphasis on more noteworthy parts of the story. Capote’s choice of imagery characterizes Perry as a person and gives an idea to who he is. Perry’s life prior to crime was normal for awhile, until his family situation crumbled: “in the ring, a lean Cherokee girl rode a wild horse, a ‘bucking bronc,’ and her loosened hair whipped back and forth, flew about like a flamenco dancer’s. Her name was Flo Buckskin, and she was a professional rodeo performer, a ‘champion bronc-rider.’ So was her husband, Tex John Smith; it was while touring the Western rodeo circuit that the handsome Indian girl and the homely-handsome Irish cowboy had met, married, and had the four children sitting in the grandstand. (And Perry could remember many another rodeo spectacle--see again his father skipping inside a circle of spinning lassos, or his mother, with silver and turquoise bangles jangling on her wrists, trick-riding at a desperado speed that thrilled her youngest child and caused crowds in towns from Texas to Oregon to ‘stand up and clap.’)” Perry’s troubles after his parents separation may very well have contributed to his becoming a murderer later on down the road. The abrupt change in his life at such a young age, clearly had a lasting impact on him and his lifestyle. His past altered the way he thought and the type of person he was. Capote quotes,

    Read More

  • In Cold Blood Book Analysis

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Cold Blood, a novel written by Truman Capote and published in 1966, is, though written like fiction, a true account of the murder of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. This evocative story illuminates new insights into the minds of criminals, and how society tends to act as a whole, and achieves its purpose by utilizing many of the techniques presented in Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In In Cold Blood, Capote uses symbols of escape and American values, and recurring themes of egotism and family to provide a new perspective on crime and illustrate an in-depth look at why people do the things they do.

    Read More

  • Passage Analysis In Cold Blood

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Different Ways To Humanize The Killers In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    1485 Words  | 3 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Analysis of Truman Capote´s In Cold Blood

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • Ethical Behavior in the Film Capote

    639 Words  | 2 Pages

    The film Capote, based on the how the writer of “In Cold Blood” did his research to write his book, a masterpiece of literature, has portrayed Capote’s behavior during his research vividly. Capote’s behavior during the years Perry waits on death row in order to get personal testimony of the night of killings is a controversial topic. Some argue that what Capote did was absolutely necessary for an ambitious writer to create such a master piece while other argue that human ethics is more important than the creation of an ideal “non-fiction noble” and the paths he took to get there are morally ambiguous. Even though he gave the world a milestone in literature, his behaviors seem unethical because he lied, pretended to be a friend of an accused murderer who was in a death row, and did not have any empathy to him.

    Read More

  • Cold Blood

    1000 Words  | 2 Pages

    Perry Smith was a short man with a large torso. At first glance, “he seemed a more normal-sized man, a powerful man, with the shoulders, the arms, the thick, crouching torso of a weight lifter. [However] when he stood up he was no taller than a twelve-year old child” (15). What Smith lacked in stature, he made up in knowledge. Perry was “a dictionary buff, a devotee of obscure words” (22). As an adolescent, he craved literature and loved to gain insight of the imaginary worlds he escaped into, for Perry’s reality was nothing less than a living nightmare. “His mother [was] an alcoholic [and] had strangled to death on her own vomit” (110). Smith had two sisters and an older brother. His sister Fern had committed suicide by jumping out of a window and his brother Jimmy followed Fern’s suit and committed suicide the day after his wife had killed herself. Perry’s sister, Barbara, was the only normal one and had made a good life for herself. These traumatic events left Perry mentally unstable and ultimately landed him in jail, where he came into acquaintance with Dick Hickock, who was in jail for passing bad checks. Dick and Perry became friends and this new friendship changed the course of their lives forever. Hickock immediately made note of Perry’s odd personality and stated that there was “something wrong with Little Perry. Perry could be such a kid, always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep. And often [Dick] had seen him sit for hours just sucking his thumb. In some ways old Perry was spooky as hell. Take, for instance, that temper of his of his. He could slide into a fury quicker than ten drunk Indians. And yet you wouldn’t know it. He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at it or listen to it” (108). Perry’s short fuse and dysfunctional background were the two pieces to Perry’s corrupt life puzzle that soured and tainted the final “picture”.

    Read More

  • The Role Of The American Dream In In Cold Blood

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    He grew up in a different environment with a broken family with no apparent dreams. As a young boy his parents separated and he was forced to go with his mother. He later ran away to be with his father who turned him down and ended up being abandoned by his family completely. He then came to stay at a catholic orphanage, where he was abused by nuns and caregivers. His father finally decided to take him into his care and together they got away and traveled, ending his education before passing the third grade which bothered him as he became older. Perry joined the marines and army, then came back to relocate his father. Him and his father had a breakthrough over starvation, leaving Perry with no one else to turn to and therefore getting involved in committing crimes. Once he got caught and jailed, his mother had died and his brother and sister had both committed suicide. By all his experiences we can say Perry definitely lived a different life and his family portrayal was very different from the Clutters. After so much abandonment and abuse, we can understand why he almost feels nothing and how growing up has affected him. The American Dream for Perry might not have been a “perfect family” but may have been to find something with order, and control. The dream Perry’s family would be focused on is reaching a decent life as their past has been

    Read More

  • 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.

    Read More

  • Personality Disorders In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    1807 Words  | 4 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Research Paper On In Cold Blood

    453 Words  | 1 Pages

    In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel first published in 1966, it was written by american author Truman Capote. It tells the story of the brutal murder of the Clutter family, in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. Truman Capote was immediately interested in the case when he learned about it, he decided to travel to Kansas to write about it, even before the murderers were caught. Capote interviewed the townspeople to learn more about the lives of the victims. Capote’s book also explored the minds of the two mentally ill murderers. The killers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were arrested six weeks after the murders. Though Capote’s book is non-fiction novel, he can still select the information he wants, and put it in a different light. Capote therefore can, and does alter the reader’s point of view and opinion on certain things throughout the book.

    Read More

  • Realism In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    220 Words  | 1 Pages

    I do not think In Cold Blood is just journalism. I agree that this book is a creative work. Capote considers his work as a nonfiction novel which is a style of writing based on true story with additional dramatic techniques. I have read the real case that was written by the police department ("Clutter Family Murders."). It is so similar to In Cold Blood, that I even thought it was a summary of the book. It is apparent that Capote added some additional stories especially the part when Dick and Perry are planned to be executed. This addition was meant to tell the readers the hypocrisy of death penalty but other than that I thought Capote got easy credit for just re-writing the real crime. Obviously, the book concentrates a lot on the neighbors

    Read More

  • The Clutter Family Murders In John Capote's In Cold Blood

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    When it comes down to the ones closest to you while rat you from time to time. Perry’s sister his own flesh and blood, Barbara, wrote a letter describing Perry’s devastating childhood to the parole board, they even questioned her. She was terrified of her brother, she knew he was dangerous. Barbara tried to help him plenty of times

    Read More

  • Horrendous Crimes In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout human history, horrendous crimes have always captivated audiences around the world. But, in recent decades with the invention of television, people can watch adaptations of ‘real’ or fictional crimes. Although In Cold Blood is considered the first true crime novel, our obsession with true crime began around the 19th century with news articles and books about gruesome murders which later became the basis for many TV shows and films that we watch today.

    Read More

More about Truman Capote's In Cold Blood: Orb Project

Open Document