Use Of Imagery In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

262 Words1 Page

An old town with nothing but sixteen miles of barren land surrounding the creaking houses never held the slightest significance to anyone but farmers. The scenery: quaint, dreary, and full of farmland and cattle. Almost a ghost town, as no one ever passes through. The town of Holcomb finds itself as the setting for the novel In Cold Blood. The author, Capote, uses vivid imagery to describe this quite depressing town that holds a few uplifting qualities.
“High wheat plains” and “hard blue skies” describes the setting around the incredibly dreary, although beautiful, town of Holcomb, Kansas. Capote pulls you into the scene using specific details of the town while also not using exaggerative examples so the town appears ordinary. He describes

Show More
Related

  • Word Choice In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    275 Words  | 1 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • 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

  • Use Of Imagery In Richard Capote's In Cold Blood

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this story he gives the murderers their own sense of self and showed how they choose to deal with their lives. This also lets readers know that each person was different and that neither of them truly knew how to “be normal”, as most people would say, and live their own lives without causing trouble. Pushing the reader to form an opinion, biased or not, with the information that was given about each character by Capote. Capote through this all, did a great job of bringing the murderers to life for his reader and sharing the stories of each person that may not have been said by the media or anything else that gives people information about the world that is around them. Giving these characters lives and experiences were great parts to the story and is what ultimately gave the book its

    Read More

  • Covered with Dust: Truman Capote

    1166 Words  | 3 Pages

    Capote begins the novel with a complete description of not only the town as a whole, but also the people and landmark buildings, which allows Capote to characterize the town completely. In the first line of the passage Capote uses the rhetoric of diction and imagery, to not only expose the surroundings to the audiences, but also to begin the higher and implicit meanings of his words. “Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area”, this quote from the passage provides the implicit understanding that the land surrounding this town is unkempt, and lacks human interference. The “high wheat plains” act as a barrier to the outside world that those who live in the village, want to stay isolated from. The ending of the same line uses diction to explicitly show that this one little area is divorced from other communities. “Area that other Kansans call “out there””, shows that even to people who live in Kansas, which Americans consider “out there” can call this town “out there” providing exemplary evidence to Capote’s purpose of proving the seclusion of the village. “The countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert- clear air”, shows the use of diction and implicit meaning. ...

    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

  • 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

  • Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    Capote never intended for In Cold Blood to be a documentary of the multiple murder that happened in the small town of Holcomb. When Capote published his novel, people where not familiar with non-fiction novels. People knew of the murders that had happened and started criticizing the book for not being truthful to what had really happened. This novel can not be looked at as journalism, which is often the mistake people made and still make today. Although there are many facts within the novel, the story that is being told is not always credible. Capote has also been criticized for his method of gathering information, because he did not take notes or record his interviews. Capote said that he had tested himself and that he had a 95% memory recall, but this was not always trusted by critics.Capote had made a mistake by telling the public that every word in the novel was true, this just opened him up for critics and journalists to challenge his bold statement.

    Read More

  • Mix of Journalism and Fiction in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    784 Words  | 2 Pages

    First, Capote involves his reader. "This immediacy, this spellbinding 'you-are-there' effect, comes less from the sensational facts (which are underplayed) than from the 'fictive' techniques Capote employs" (Hollowell 82). Capote takes historical facts and brings in scenes, dialogue, and point of view to help draw the reader in (Hollowell 82).

    Read More

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

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    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

  • Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

    572 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • In Cold Blood

    739 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Holcomb, a village located in the southern west of Kansas, transformed into a well-known community after the gruesome murders of the Clutters. “Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans, in fact, few Kansans-had ever heard of Holcomb”(5). The dash makes a sudden pause emphasizing the effect the murders of the Clutters had on the village by describing the setting. In that quote, Capote uses the dash to break the thought since, at the beginning, Capote clarifies that few people knew where Holcomb was located and then interrupts his own thought by using the dash to clarify that few Kansans ever heard of Holcomb. Therefore, by using the dashes, the setting is implied and described as an isolated lonely place, in which everyone knew each other, until “mid-November of 1959” when the murders occurred. “Since the announcement of Hickock’s confession on Sunday evening, newsmen of every style had assembled in Garden City: representatives of the major wire services, photographers, newsreel and television cameramen, reporters...

    Read More

  • Passage Analysis In Cold Blood

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    In order to draw in the attention of his audience, Capote begins each passage the same way with the sentences, “Mountains. Hawks wheeling in a white sky” (107, 110). The repetition is a sign of the significance of

    Read More

  • The Role Of The American Dream In In Cold Blood

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the nonfiction novel, “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote, the author tells a story of the murderers and victims of a slaughter case in Holcomb, Kansas. Instead of writing a book on the murder case as a crime report, the author decides to write about the people. The people we learn about are the killers, Dick and Perry, and the murdered family, the Clutters. The author describes how each family was and makes the portrayals of Dick and Perry’s family different from the Clutters.The portrayal of the Clutters and of Dick and Perry’s families, was used to describe what the American Dream was for each character. In the beginning we learn about what type of family the Clutters were and how they represented the American Dream for the people of Holcomb.

    Read More

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

    669 Words  | 2 Pages

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

    Read More

More about Use Of Imagery In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Open Document