In Cold Blood: Effective Use of Characterization
Capote's extensive characterization is a key element of In Cold Blood. The characters can be divided into three groups: the Clutter family, the two murderers, and the characters who were emotionally attached to the murder. Each killer's psyche is researched by Capote, and each is individualized by his specific psyche.
Capote goes to great lengths to show that the townspeople viewed the Clutter family as an ideal American family. Mr. Herbert Clutter was the most successful farmer in Holcomb: "He was, however, the community's most widely known citizen, prominent both there and in Garden City, the close dash by county seat..." (6). Capote details his numerous activities, including filling a position in the Federal Farm Credit Board during the Eisenhower administration. He was also "chairman of the Kansas Conference of Farm Organizations and his name is everywhere respectfully recognized among Midwestern agriculturalists" (6).
Capoteselects important details in characterizing each family member. The strongly admired Clutter family had four children, three girls and one boy. Daughter Nancy and son Kenyon lived at home, while the older two daughters had married and left home. Nancy Clutter, an attractive sixteen year old girl 'had been the town darling,' having distinguished herself as a straight-A student, the president of her class, a leader in the 4-H program and the Young Methodists League, a skillful rider, an excellent musician..." (Reed 104).
Capote's details show that Kenyon Clutter was also well-liked. His "crew-cut hair is hemp colored: he was six feet tall and lanky, though hefty enough to have once rescued a pair of full grown sheep" (38). A y...
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..., praises Herb Clutter: "He was a modest man, but a proud man... He raised a fine family. He made something of his life" (79). The residents of Holcomb were described as being shocked yet inquisitive--the utmost respect for this family was the cause of this curiosity. To sum up, the residents of Holcomb, or the people emotionally attached to the murder, were characterized as being, respectful, gracious, and caring individuals.
When considering In Cold Blood, the reader must take into account that Capote is not inventing people, he is conveying the lessons and experiences of real people. This style is not the norm because it is not the standard challenge of a novelist. However, by carefully selecting detail in describing the various personalities involved in the crime, Capote passes facts of all the characters to the reader in an easily understood fashion.
In May of 1997, Charles Thomas Sell, a dentist working in St. Louis, Missouri, was accused of multiple forms of medical fraud. He and his employees altered dental records and x-rays of their patients and submitted them to insurance companies, seeking payment for procedures they never performed to fix problems that never existed. Sell was deemed competent to stand trial and was charged with 56 counts of mail fraud, six counts of medicaid fraud, and one count of money laundering.
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.)
Throughout the first part of In Cold Blood, “The Last to See Them Alive,” the reader can find extensive descriptions of the characters and setting. Much of the first forty pages is Capote giving elaborate descriptions of the Clutters and of the Holcomb area. For example, Capote gives us insight on Nancy’s personality when one of the
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Truman Capote showcases his very distinct style of writing in his true crime novel, In Cold Blood. Capote intentionally frames ruthless murderer Perry Smith as a relatable, well-intentioned human throughout the whole novel, and employs various rhetorical devices to show us that Perry is not just a stone cold killer. Specifically, Capote uses diction comprised of complex words, interviews conducted by Capote personally in which he interacted with the suspects and their loved ones, and sentence structure that came off as very to the point, in order to illustrate Perry’s dynamic and unique personality, opposed to the one dimensional heartless murderer many made him out to be.
This novel takes place in Holcomb, Kansas. The Clutters live in the area, on River Valley Farm. It is very clear from the introduction of the book that they are going to be murdered. The story threads between this family and Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. The Clutters go on about their daily activities, having no idea what is to come. Dick and Perry slowly make their way towards the Clutter farm, with an evil plan to carry out. As they make their way to the farm, the duo make stops for supplies. Perry is shown to have came for parole, but not finding an old friend, he agrees to work with Dick. Capote goes back and forth between characters, with no correlation, only to who is the most important at any given time during the case. Dick and Perry eventually arrive at the Clutter home.
Throughout the novel, the readers are introduced to Dewey himself, his wife, his children, and some of his background. Thus resulting in him being a round character. To first introduce Dewey, Capote writes “...sizable portion of western Kansas, is a lean and handsome fourth generation Kansan of forty-seven named Alvin Adams Dewey,” (80). In this annotate, it is gathered that Dewey is a fourth generation Kansan, is handsome, and he is forty-seven years old. The quote above has an informative tone illustrating that the author wants to inform the readers about Al
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,
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,
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...
The disruption of an all-American society plays a key factor in In Cold Blood because of the effect it has on the story. In Holcomb, Kansas, the community’s order is disrupted through the murdering of the Clutter family. “Nevertheless, when the community lost the ...
Capote uses different voices to tell the story, creating an intimacy between the readers and the murders, the readers and the victims, and all the other players in this event—townspeople, investigators, friends of the family. This intimacy lead...
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.
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.
There was a need for a canal through the isthmus of Central America. The big question was who would step up and build it. France had just lost the Franco-Prussian War against Germany. The country felt that it had lost some prestige in eyes of other nations. There seemed only one certain way to restore its glory, undertake and complete the most challenging engineering feat in history. Build a canal through Central America and link the world’s two greatest oceans. (Dolan 53)