Truth and Fiction in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

1936 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on crime fiction

How In Cold Blood Capote Desensitized Our Ability to Differentiate Between Truth and Fiction.

Reading In Cold Blood brought me a new literary and psychological understanding. I realized what such a heinous murder would do to a town like Holcomb, Kansas. I always took my childhood for granted; nothing bad happened in our town, nothing equal to the ugliness of the Clutter murder. After rereading In Cold Blood, I read every piece of literary criticism on the book as I could find. I began to consider the impact of Capote on today's based-on-fact books and movies. My goal was to discover whether the blurring of the line between truth and fiction has befogged how we, as readers and viewers, differentiate between truth and fiction.

What I learned (or didn't learn).

Wendy Lesser, in an article for the Los Angeles Times, wrote of her interest in murder in literature. She went so far as to teach a literature class at UC Santa Cruz on murder. The class focused on works of fiction based on true facts (books that Capote would have said were non-fiction novels), books such as Norman Mailer's The Executioners Song, Joan Didion's The White Album, and Capote's In Cold Blood (par. 13). At the end of the semester, one of her students said, " 'I've really enjoyed this course, but I'm worried that it's hardened me. I mean, I don't know how seriously I take murder anymore'" (par.15). Lesser replied that by looking at murder as art, you move away from the seeing it as murder (par.16).

Truman Capote claimed to have invented a new type of literature with In Cold Blood, the non-fiction novel (Plimpton, par 2). Although others (particularly Daniel DeFoe in A Journal of the Plague Year) had used this technique b...

... middle of paper ...

...into small-town Kansas with his long floating scarf and his negligees." The Guardian. 76 pars. 14 February 1998. Lexis-Nexis.

Swanson, William. "Murder, He Wrote." MPLS-St. Paul Magazine. 14 pars. November 1995. InfoTrac.

Yagoda, Ben. "In Cold Facts, Some Books Falter." The New York Times. 18 pars. 15 March 1998, late ed. Lexis-Nexis. Works Consulted

Boxer, Sarah. "When Truth Challenges Fiction and Becomes Art." The New York Times. 13 pars. 8 May 2000, late ed. Lexis-Nexis.

Fremont-Smith, Eliot. "Books of the Times: In Cold Blood." New York Times Book Review. 12 pars. 10 January 1966. Lexis-Nexis.

King, Larry. "Truman Capote and the Murder that Horrified a Nation." Larry King Live. CNN. 25 November 1997. Transcript. Lexis-Nexis.

Knickerbocker, Conrad. "1960's Kansas Death Trip." New York Times. 9 pars. 6 October 1966, late ed. Lexis-Nexis.

Show More
Related

  • Portrayed as Evil was He

    756 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reporter, Daily Mail. "Police Exhume Bodies of Killers from Truman Capote's In Cold Blood to

    Read More

  • In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

    1501 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • In Cold Blood: Nature vs Nurture

    877 Words  | 2 Pages

    The detailed account of the killers’ childhoods makes the reader sympathize with the Clutter family’s killers Smith and Hickock. Should they reserve the death penalty? Did Truman Capote take a stand on the death penalty? By giving the reader a detailed account of Perry Smith’s and Dick Hickock’s childhood, Capote sets up the reader for a nurture vs. nature debate on the death penalty. The question then becomes, do the effects (if any) caused by environment in childhood make for a trained killer or a natural born one?

    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

  • Psychological Trauma in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    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).

    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

  • Theme Analysis of Killings by Andre Dubus

    753 Words  | 2 Pages

    Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.

    Read More

  • Cold Blood

    1000 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    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

  • George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

    1289 Words  | 3 Pages

    Having studied George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', I intend to discuss the type of Government envisaged by Orwell and to what extent his totalitarian Party, 'Ingsoc', satirises past regimes. I will also discuss Orwell's motive in writing such a piece and how his writing style helps it become clear.The main theme of Nineteen Eighty-Four concerns the restrictions imposed on individual freedom by a totalitarian regime. Orwell shows how such a system can impose its will on the people through manipulation of the press, the elimination of democracy, constant supervision (courtesy of the Telescreens) and more. Orwell also shows how the state has more subtle methods for imposing its authority, such as the manipulation of language and control of the media.

    Read More

  • George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four 1984

    1502 Words  | 4 Pages

    and respect. In this society, privacy and freedom do not exist. People are constantly monitored by telescreens, and subjected

    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

  • George Orwell's 1984

    429 Words  | 1 Pages

    Many of the methods that the Party in 1984 uses to sustain its absolute power, such as the rewriting of history and the use of political icons, were actually employed in Communist nations around the world (Big Brother is similar to Lenin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China). A recent historical survey conducted by a group of French scholars, published in America as The Black Book of Communism in 1999, estimates that Communist governments were directly responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people during the twentieth century, more than died during World War I, World War II, or during any of the horrific genocide campaigns of the twentieth century. Though the world did not fall under authoritarian control as Orwell feared it might, 1984 has not become dated; it remains an invaluable book, both warning against a world that could come into existence and reminding the reader of one that did.

    Read More

  • Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

    1215 Words  | 3 Pages

    of the book. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. Print.

    Read More

  • Winston Smith: A Tragic Hero

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    he is a man with a tragic flaw. Winston's fatalism, selfishness and isolation ultimately lead him to his

    Read More

More about Truth and Fiction in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Open Document