Literary Analysis of In Cold Blood
The novel, In Cold Blood, is a beautifully written piece of literature telling about the unexpected death of the Clutter family that took place in the small town of Holcomb. The author, Truman Capote, does a fantastic job explaining the tragedy, but more importantly the thoughts and feelings of the characters directly involved, including the beloved friends and family of the Clutters. By revealing the true killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, Capote takes away the mysterious aspect of the novel, but quickly replaces it with inspiring arguments between the characters concerning capital punishment and what ways to proceed, for a crime such as this one. This is exactly the kind of literature William Faulkner, winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, called
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In this part of the novel, Dick is telling Perry that he must learn to embody self-control in the difficult and pressing times. He explains, “these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself –– in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim” (page 44) when in reference to Perry and his issue with quick anger. Yes, Capote put this quote into the puzzle perfectly when describing Perry, but it is supposed to mean something much for meaningful than to just describe Perry. He uses these carefully chosen words to speak about the readers everyday life too. That he must let go of the grudges he holds against others so that it will not eventually eat him alive. His use of diction and metaphors are what gives this quote life. It is what speaks to the reader, makes him ponder on the meaning of life itself, and have a new perspective of the society we live in today. As explained in Faulkner’s speech, Capote’s diction makes the reader feel love, honor, pity, pride, compassion, 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,
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.)
Truman Capote, and his book In Cold Blood has a tone of tragic and mellow on pages 134-135. These pages we read carefully and analyzed, the two pages have these two sentences that pop out and things make sense. The pages are injected with irony and confusion. Completely contradicting himself, Capote writes about the crime that has happened and the loveable moments in the café.
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
As stated, Capote frequently delved into the lives of the cold-blooded killers. He made it a point to illustrate all of the hardships that each of them chronically faced. In the beginning of the novel, Capote used his ominous tone to stir up hate toward the killers. However, by the end, his tone was completely solemn, somber, and even sorrowful. This might be to serve an underlying purpose. Perhaps Capote himself truly opposed the death penalty? Although Capote stressed so vehemently the horrors of the Clutters' cold-blooded murders, Capote was trying to convey that their murders were not the only ones committed in cold blood. He was stating that the death penalty was also a form of cold-blooded killing, one that served no other purpose besides revenge.
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.
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.
In Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, many of the characters all experience their own conflicts and struggles. Throughout the story the main characters, Dick and Perry, are described during the murder of the Clutter family, but the author also tells stories of their childhood. Their current life is shown to be vastly different than how it used to be in the sense that, they never used to commit crimes and they had a good early life. This changes when the characters begin experiencing more stress-filled and harsh events that result in their later lives as criminals. The quote, “inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It’s a constant struggle as to which one will win and one cannot exist without the other,” describes the lives of Dick and Perry appropriately. Throughout the book, Capote uses all three rhetorical appeals and strategies to write about the internal
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...
...ion...” (“Truman” 84). Capote creates a story that was based on true events while being able to evoke emotions out of the readers. The use of an objective writing style was a fundamental part in adding to the garnering of emotions to the story as well. Through In Cold Blood, Capote alerts the audience to “...Ambiguities of the American legal system and capital punishment” (“Truman” 84), stating that in the court of law in America there are some flaws and laws that are obscure in their purpose that one should be weary about. Capote wrote In Cold Blood in order to convey the idea that whenever a person or a group of people is murdered, vengeance is always sought upon the murderers. In a place where everyone knows everyone, it is hard for the community to adjust to the losses without proper compensation, and sometimes the only way is through punishing those by death.
To fully understand the purpose of In Cold Blood, one must explore Capote's strategy in writing such a tale. In his "In Cold Blood," Capote raises the possibility of rational order without ever fully endorsing it, often revealing that random and accidental events shape the history of the crime. Because of this, we as readers cannot pinpoint one exact reason for the incidents that occurred at the Clutter house that fateful night, and are forced to sympathize with two opposing characters within the story, Perry Smith and Alvin Dewey.
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.
Overall, these two passages are just an illustrative representation of Capote’s consistent characterization of Dick and Perry. What makes Capote’s methods of characterization so different is that he does not merely state facts of each in random order. Each detail included or excluded is done with a specific purpose to manipulate the mind of the reader into sharing the same opinions of each character as