Truman Capote, renowned author of numerous classic novels, more notably, books such as Summer Crossing, The Grass Harp, The Complete Stories of Truman Capote, and In Cold Blood. However, one book from this selection stands out from the rest, it just so happens to be one of Truman Capote’s best selling books as well, In Cold Blood. What makes In Cold Blood significant from the rest is that, unlike the others, this book is able to transport the reader to a dimension of pure concentrated realism, wonderment, and imagination. This is not to say that the rest of the books within the selection are unable to achieve a similar goal, but rather to stress the point that the rhetorical devices used within In Cold Blood aid in the creation of the aforementioned…
Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood to commemorate the Clutter family as honorable people; beginning by describing the family’s personality, he paints a picture in which the Clutter family is the protagonist. Although Capote is sometimes empathetic towards Dick and Perry, and it seems his true loyalties are questionable, he wouldn’t have written the book if he hadn’t felt a pull to memorialize the family. One of the most dreadful feelings for an author would be for their work to be disregarded or simply make no impact on the reader. Capote’s worst fear is for the Clutter murder to be “‘just one of many such cases people have read about and forgotten’” (Capote 272) because Capote personally knew so many affected by the murder, including the murderers…
Truman Capote, author of the nonfiction novel In Cold blood, depicts the tragic event of a murder leaving a prominent community family dead. By Capote’s choice of diction he is able to illustrate the characters through the strategies irony and create a nervous tone to develop Dick and Perry as characters instead of stereotypical murderers.…
His parents did not dedicate their time to the upbringing of their son (Truman Capote. American Author). Therefore, young Truman was brought up by his mother’s relatives and spent his childhood in Monroeville, Alabama. His childhood was not easy due to the frequent conflicts between his parents and long-term separations with them. Furthermore, young Truman was quite sensitive, and he was frequently picked on among his peers (Truman Capote Biography). The major objective of the Truman Capote’s works was to introduce the readers the problematic issues of the real life through the symbolic images represented in his stories, one of which is the story “Miriam”.…
In writing his novel, In Cold Blood, Capote’s primary purpose is to convey his opposition towards the death penalty. Through the stylistic elements of rhetorical appeals, a selection of detail, and imagery Capote reveals the attitude he holds against this unreasonable form of justice.…
Although people perceive the murderers in a negative way, Capote writes the book in hopes that the readers see the murderers of the Clutter family in a human perspective, emphasizing that not everyone’s actions represent them as whole.…
Any story has the potential of becoming a classic novel that is read and loved by thousands, but the dimension that makes or breaks these stories lies directly within the characters involved. In Arthur Miller’s playwright, The Crucible, a plethora of distinct personalities are introduced, and it’s the unique interaction and histories between these people that expedites the entire story. Likewise, in the novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, and The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narration of the tale is told from the perspective of characters that are distinct from any others involved. Nick Carraway possess the eyes through which readers experience The Great Gatsby, and though Carraway is a relevant figure throughout…
In Cold Blood, Capote uses imagery, foreshadowing and allusion to portray Perry as a lonely man who doesn’t have his family, especially his father, there by his side to support him which slowly causes him to begin to lose his sanity and question his faith. Capote also portrays Perry as an innocent victim.…
The nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote, is a story based on the murders of Clutter family members. The novel is set in the quaint town of Holcomb, Kansas at the turn of the 1960’s where the novel explains in details of the motives and actions done by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, the culprits. The novel illustrates the journey that Dick and Perry went through from the planning of the murders,to committing the actual murders of the Clutter’s on November 19, 1959, to their own deaths merely 6 years later. Throughout the novel, Capote uses a variety of writing strategies to keep the audience on the edge of their seats, despite the fact that Capote reveals the outcome of the supposed mystery within the first few pages of…
A nonfiction novelist should remain true to character personalities and seek out their own interviews to hear information first-hand. Capote relied heavily on Dewey for files and community members to interview and in turn, made him to be a crime-solving, “hero” figure (Keefe 7). “Capote didn’t help matters by announcing that he found the presence of a tape recorder or notebook intrusive when conducting interviews, and preferred to rely on his own recollection of what his sources said,” (Keefe 2) which ultimately stunts truth and the key of a nonfiction novel. Quotes also hold untrue when paraphrasing interviews in this way. Furthermore, Perry Smith, the second killer in the Clutter case, brings the persona of a romantic in Capote’s writing, not an assassin; this, like making Dewey “heroic” can likely hurt the victims’ families. In fact, Smith was “conscious and deliberate in carrying out the murders” with little to no regret (Keefe 2). As Dewey stated, if Capote was fond of a person, they are characterized in a positive light (Helliker 9). Major character details should never be miswritten, since they are what form a story.…
does not explicitly state that he is against the death penalty, his writing style subtly suggests that…
During my research, I found that ‘In Cold Blood’ was far from “immaculately factual”, as Truman Capote claims it to be. Firstly, in an interview with George Plimpton in 1966, Capote describes how he managed to input his opinions into the novel, without interrupting the novel. He explains that by qualifying a statement he disagrees with, he can convince a reader of his own opinions. Secondly, Capote refused to use a tape recorder. Although he claimed to be 94% accurate at remembering interviews, he is still very susceptible to confirmation bias. I believe it is likely that Capote misremembered events, choosing to include, consciously or subconsciously, details that supported his preconceived ideas of the story.…
Capote’s audience would probably range from people interested in mystery novels to people wanting to understand capital…
Similar to In Cold Blood, this novel tackles a real-life tragedy in brutally exquisite, personal detail. Urrea’s chapter-long description of the tortuous process in which the living men’s bodies bake, wither, and decompose in the desert heat still haunts me to this day. As a reader, I’m enraptured by his characterization of all parties involved as living, breathing, flawed, greedy, humorous, wicked, and selfless people. While it often becomes a difficult space to navigate, I feel truly at home in this swath between the complexity of real life and the beauty of prose in which authors like Capote and Urrea weave their…
Murder often makes a persons blood boil and ask the question, “How can someone do that to someone else?” Most of time when a gruesome act of violence happens people wonder, “What kind of human being does it take to do something like that?” Truman Capote’s book, In Cold Blood, is about such an act of violence; a murder that, when the reader walks away, only registers a banal. The killing of the Clutter family, which happened in 1959 in the town of Holcomb, Kansas, blew most people away with its senselessness and horror. Capote, however, writes the story with personal background on the killers, making them human and giving the reader, something most people do not get to hear or even care to know, a reason to the mindless murders. Evil is easily banalized when there is a story to go along with it.…