An Analysis Of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood

The pursuit of creativity and innovation is an alluring quality that nearly all people possess. Making something the world has never seen before is attractive and enticing, but the chase for originality can sometimes lead to a subpar creation. Truman Capote wanted to make something the literary community had never seen before. He wanted to merge two styles of writing, journalism and fiction, to create a new art form which he deemed the “nonfiction novel”, or faction. Although In Cold Blood has its flaws, Capote’s novel was a wild success and changed the way people write with the impact it has on literary circles.

Capote tells his story in four parts: The Last to See Them Alive, Persons Unknown, Answer, and The Corner. The four

Capote dedicates the first three pages of the book to describing and giving details about the town. He shows the calm, tranquil mood of the town and how “Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there”(ICB, p5). ***

One of the literary elements Capote favors in his novel is irony. He highlights certain events so that the irony is evident as the reader follows along with the plot. On the day Mr. Clutter was murdered, he had just purchased an $80,000 life insurance policy from Mr. Johnson. It was an almost impossible occurrence which Capote highlights in Mr. Johnson's reaction to the event. He states, “I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t afford to”(ICB, p71). Capote uses irony in his novel to bring humor to an otherwise sad and bleak story.

A constantly deliberated argument in the field of psychology is whether killers are born or made. This is explored in the discussion of nature vs. nurture. The basis of the argument is whether the abstract attributes of humans, such as personality, intelligence, and sexual orientation are determined by our coding of genes or by the environment we are raised in and lived in. In his novel, Capote shows the opposing views of this argument through the lives and personalities of Dick and