The book I read for my non-fiction novel was called “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote. As a whole this book was disturbingly realistic, intriguingly interesting and horrifically beautiful. While the Clutters go about their daily business, running errands and baking pies, Dick and Perry are getting ready to rob the Clutters and leave no witnesses. After a long drive, they pull up to the Clutter home with a shotgun and knife in hand. That morning, the bodies are discovered and investigations are started to find the killers and put them where they need to be. Soon rumors in their town start to set in, but meanwhile Dick and Perry set off for Mexico. When Dick and Perry are found and death comes, Dick is awkward and Perry is remorseful.
I personally liked the the relationship between Perry and Dick the most in the book. And the best part of the novel is their chemistry, their feelings towards each other, everything about them together. How Capote represented it and portrayed it was phenomenal and extraordinary. This is the best part in the book because of how different they are but how much they need each other to survive the world they live in; because without each other it wouldn't be worth it. Dick always had control of Perry. But, in turn, Perry is much braver than Dick could ever be. The best example of this is the night of the murders. Dick thought the entire plan up, but even when Perry wanted to leave, he insisted that they stay there and keep looking for the safe. It is Perry who stops Dick from raping Nancy, but the fact still remains that Perry reacted very emotionally, to Dick's actions. On the other hand, Dick was operating according to the plan that he thought up, and convinced Perry to go along with it. While Dick i...
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...t by what he was saying. I don’t think he could have fixed this problem without changing the story entirely. To be a story to really excite a sixteen year old reading a book, typically they have to be able to relate to the book in some way, or want to be apart of the world that the book is in.
I think that the targeted audience for this book is anyone mature enough to read it and understand it. It is for people searching for a rush from the safety of their own home. People who are adventurous but shy. Anyone that wants to be scared for their life but completely safe. I would definitely recommend this book to others because I got such a rush, and thrill from reading it. Personally, I think a good book will tear the emotions from you and send them on one hell of a ride. And this is exactly what this book did, it made me furious, sympathetic, happy and made me cry.
Being said so, parts in the book where violence such as wolf attacks, gunshots, and potential homicide is clearly depicted through simple yet powerful vocabulary. The book also contains parts about kissing and a sexual act which was depicted through a fade-to-black style. Although the book contains such scenes, the depth of the words that were used to elaborate a particular scene was not too strong and was in fact in a moderate level. The book can therefore still be suitable for young readers. At the same time, the characters within the book are also of the same age range which made it easy to understand and relate to the story as it progresses and
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,
Dick was 33 years old and he did not have the best character. Dick was one who
In Cold Blood is the true story of a multiple murder that rocked the small town of Holcomb, Kansas and neighboring communities in 1959. It begins by introducing the reader to an ideal, all-American family, the Clutters; Herb (the father), Bonnie (the mother), Nancy (the teenage daughter), and Kenyon (the teenage son). The Clutters were prominent members of their community who gained admiration and respect for their neighborly demeanors.
Capote uses recurring themes in In Cold Blood to emphasize the role of family and egotism in criminals. “On their way, and never coming back - without regret, as far as he was concerned, for he was leaving nothing behind, and no one who might deeply wonder into what thin air he 'd spiraled. The same could not be said of Dick. There were those Dick claimed to love: three sons, a mother, a father, a brother,” (Capote 66). This quote is important because it shows the background of both Perry and Dick. Perry came from a “broken home” where no one had ever truly loved him, not even his father. Dick, on the other hand, came from a loving family, and the fact that he loved them back was a sign that he didn’t have a mental illness and he was rather committing these crimes for other reasons. The role of families is highlighted in a way that shows that while families can be a source of protection and love (such as the Clutters), a lack of one (Perry Smith) can make you a social misfit. Perry Smith had nothing to lose. On the other hand, Dick actually had a family who loved him. Both of these aspects give deeper insight into the characters and their minds. Egotism is also a motif within the novel. "Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing? Why should that
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).
Capote closes the novel twice; once through the newspaper articles and then again through the eyes of Dewey. Capote attempts to remove the feelings that the reader has developed with Dick and Perry by referring to them by their last names only. As the executions are told, Perry shows signs of insanity, and is then hanged. This leaves the reader feeling the pathos that Capote used to build Perry's character in question.
Throughout his nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote continuously contrasts the kindheartedness and innocence of the Clutters to the malicious, manipulative demeanor of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith to emphasize the cold, cruel nature of their crime. By harshly interrupting peaceful, endearing images of Nancy Clutter baking a pie with descriptions of Dick and Perry planning the town darling’s very murder, Capote consistently juxtaposes good and evil. His tactic descriptions of the seemingly discordant yet parallel occurrences in different settings and employment of strong imagery and pathos throughout the novel prove effective in not only developing characterization and appealing to the reader’s emotions but building the contrast between good and evil that
When first describing Dick and Perry, Capote describes dick as “an athlete constructed on a welterweight scale. The tattooed face of a cat, blue and grinning, covered his right hand…More markings…ornamented his arms and torso.” The metaphor comparing Dick to a welterweight athlete gives the perception that Dick is a mean looking guy. Basically, what a stereotypical criminal looks like; and that is exactly what Dick is. At the end of the passage, after describing Dick’s car colli...
Although they may not be “normal” people, they are human beings. He turned what people believed to be horrible, vial, grim, and desolate beasts into human beings who are unable to control how they act or feel. The expression, “never read a book by it’s cover” somewhat applies to the story of Dick and Perry. They were convicted killers who murdered an innocent family --- a crime no “human” could commit. So people automatically assumed they are not human; they must be beats. However, Capote uncovers their life stories to look deeper, and eventually one could see that Dick and Perry aren’t beast after all. Capote was able to humanize the beasts that everyone thought weren’t
In the book “In Cold Blood” we meet Perry Edward Smith one of the men accused of killing the Clutter family. Perry is a unique man for how he see the world and how the world sees him. Although the townspeople and those who had heard of the murder only saw Parry as a murder. There is however one man who sees Perry more than he appeared to be and that man was Truman Capote. Perry had an interesting life from how he was raised, becoming friends with Richard Eugene Hickock, to the murder of the Clutter family, all the way to Capote writing about him and the trail he and Dick must face. It was Capote who brought the idea that Perry was not a bad person persa but rather he made a mistake that has caused him to spend the rest of his life behind the bars of a jail.
In this day and age the term “murder” is coined as a word used in everyday language, albeit fifty years ago in the [rural] heartland of America, that word evoked emotion out of the entire town’s population. Prior to writing In Cold Blood, Truman Capote had written several pieces that lead him to writing a piece of literature that would infuse fiction and nonfiction, thus In Cold Blood was created, albeit after six years of research (“Truman” 84). "Truman Capote is one of the more fascinating figures on the American literary landscape, being one of the country's few writers to cross the border between celebrity and literary acclaim…He contributed both to fiction and nonfiction literary genres and redefined what it meant to join the otherwise separate realms of reporting and literature." ___ In Cold Blood takes place in the rural heartland in America, capturing the lives of the Clutter family in the days preceding their murder. The story shifts to the murderers, Dick Hickock, Perry Smith, and the lives of the men prior to the events that ultimately unfold in the murder of the Clutters, although the actual events of the murder are not revealed until later in the story through Perry’s flashbacks. At this point of the story the narration switches between the fugitives and the investigation lead by Detective Alvin Dewey of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Truman Capote's novel In Cold Blood delineates justice in order to depict the disruption of an all-American society.
Fans of the novel like the way you get to see inside Grace and Marty 's personalities, and the way that these two kids are just like any other, if not a little more unusual. You will find yourself glued to the pages until you have finished reading the novel. The adventures will make it so that you only breath about every once in a while and you will like the characters you are reading about, even if you are an adult. The novel is vivid in description and it is almost as though you are able to make a movie of things in your head. Some felt that they were along for the ride with the heroes, Grace and Marty, in this one and they enjoyed every moment of
but his problem was making his book read like a novel. He accomplished this by
Altogether, this is a book to be read thoughtfully and more than once. It is about an unusually sensitive and intelligent boy; but, then, are not all boys unusual and worthy of understanding? If they are bewildered at the complexity of modern life, unsure of themselves, shocked by the spectacle of perversity and evil around them - are not adults equally shocked by the knowledge that even children cannot escape this contact and awareness? & nbsp;