In Truman Capote’s famous non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood, there is evidence that supports the injustices of the trial: death penalty. The final outcome of the trail was never to be any different than death. “Of all the people in all the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered” (Capote 85). We know the two men who killed the Clutter family, Perry Smith and Bill Hickock, preplanned the crime with malice and forethought. Although the actions were crul and grusome, does Death Row fit what they did if their pasts, childhood environments and situation, are bad. Capote shows the effect of childhood on the killers and if the death penalty is fair. Capote gives the killers a voice to show their humanity by giving childhood accounts of their lives. He questions the justice of is the death penalty fair, and if inherent evil is a product of childhood or society. Is it nature or nurture? Capote gives a look into the minds of the killers and the nature vs. nurture theory. The detailed account the killers’ childhoods makes the reader sympathize with the Clutter family’s killers Smith and Hickock. Should they reserve the death penalty? Did Truman Capote take a stand on the death penalty? By giving the readers a detailed accounting of Perry Smith’s and Dick Hickock’s childhood, Capote sets up the reader for nurture vs. nature debate on the death penalty. The question then becomes, do the effects (if any) caused by environment in childhood make for a trained killer or a natural born one? 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... ... middle of paper ... ...ionship with Smith during his time on Death Row, making his unbiased writing biased. By the time Smith and Hickock are hanged Smith is portrayed in the role of misunderstood good guy in the good-guy/bad-guy literary device. Capote was not apposed the death penalty, he used the double handing as the dramatic ending to In Cold Blood. Thought out the third section of In Cold Blood whenever Hickock is contemplating or in gagging in a sexual act Smith reacts in an angry or jealous way. Capote repeatedly interprets Smith’s actions towards Hickock as showing his morality, where Hickock is voiced has having none. Capote voices that Smith prevents the rape of Nancy Clutter on Moral grounds. Capote shows this again in the scene in which Hickock has a prosttsuite in the room during their time in Mexico. Works Cited Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood. Random House. New York. 1965.
In Cold Blood addresses a variety of issues including questions of whether a person's upbringing plays a role in criminal activity, and whether the death penalty is right or wrong. It also deals with issues such as prejudice and religion. I feel as if the disposition of the case was fair, but I also feel bad for them.
In this story he gives the murderers their own sense of self and showed how they choose to deal with their lives. This also lets readers know that each person was different and that neither of them truly knew how to “be normal”, as most people would say, and live their own lives without causing trouble. Pushing the reader to form an opinion, biased or not, with the information that was given about each character by Capote. Capote through this all, did a great job of bringing the murderers to life for his reader and sharing the stories of each person that may not have been said by the media or anything else that gives people information about the world that is around them. Giving these characters lives and experiences were great parts to the story and is what ultimately gave the book its
In In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the characters Smith and Hickock, while both criminals involved in the killing of the Clutters, are portrayed quite differently. It is clear that Capote favors Smith. Throughout the book, Smith is written in a way that could incite sympathy within the reader while Hickock is shown to be a remorseless, irredeemable killer. Nevertheless, there are moments in which Smith seems as if he doesn’t deserve sympathy, such as when he shows no remorse for his actions, but overall, Capote spends a majority of the book humanizing him while simultaneously antagonizing Hickock. Some could argue that this story is not established as that of victims and villains but that it focuses more on whatever is relevant to telling the
Truman Capote establishes respect and trust in what he writes from with audience, ethos, through the use of an extensive variety of facts and statistics, logos. Capote uses so many dates, times, and other facts about the crime committed in the book and the subsequent investigation that the reader has to believe what the author is writing. The use of all these facts shows that Capote did his research and he interviewed, questioned, and obtained the opinions of every person that even slightly important to crime itself and the investigation/trial. The author is obviously very meticulous when it comes to dates and times; every important event in the book has a date and sometimes even a time of day to go with it. Some examples of dates included were the day of the murders (November 15th, 1959), dates of when Perry and Dick were here or there (December 31th, 1959- a small restaurant in Texas or noon on December 25th, 1959- beach in Miami Florida), date when the two criminals were apprehended (January 1st, 1960), dates when they were brought from this prison to that one and finally when they were brought to death’s row (April, 1960). Other small facts are also used by the author, like facts about the criminal’s early lives or experiences that they had, which could only have been obtained through extensive interviews with Perry and Dick. The use of all these logos by Capote establishes strong ethos, showing the reader that the author did more than enough research to show that he has the knowledge to write a whole book on the subject.
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.
The film Capote, based on the how the writer of “In Cold Blood” did his research to write his book, a masterpiece of literature, has portrayed Capote’s behavior during his research vividly. Capote’s behavior during the years Perry waits on death row in order to get personal testimony of the night of killings is a controversial topic. Some argue that what Capote did was absolutely necessary for an ambitious writer to create such a master piece while other argue that human ethics is more important than the creation of an ideal “non-fiction noble” and the paths he took to get there are morally ambiguous. Even though he gave the world a milestone in literature, his behaviors seem unethical because he lied, pretended to be a friend of an accused murderer who was in a death row, and did not have any empathy to him.
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.
In Cold Blood is a work of art, and gave a true meaning to life itself. Capote referred to In Cold Blood as “New Journalism”. He said that he wanted to bring the art of the novelist together with the techniques of journalism. There is much truth in it, whether or not it is “true” is at least debatable (Garrett,80). This provoking book generates the kind of deep interest and deep discussion. Truman invented the genre of true crime. In Cold Blood is not a tragic drama but an intervention on reality (Dakes, 69). Its dramatic interest lies in the dramatic class of murders and the pursuit of the criminals. The material of In Cold Blood is to some extent a return to Capote’s childhood and a real-life confirmation of his earliest imaginative creations and techniques (Nance, Page 626). In Cold Blood consumed more than six years of his life, but it won him enthusiastic praise, mountains of publicity, and millions of dollars (Krebs,320). The novel tells the story of the murder of the Clutter family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Clutter and their two teenage children, and the events that lead the killers to murder. The family was living in Holcom...
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,
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.
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...
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 early morning of November 15, 1959 four family members of the Clutter family were brutally murdered in the small town of Holcomb Kansas. Two men make an escape, fleeing across the country living what those two thought to be the dream. While on the run, a detective works tirelessly night and day to catch the despicable people who could commit such an atrocity. Truman Capote captures both realities, putting them together in a true crime story of convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hitchcock who run from the law and Al Dewey’s hunt for the killers. In his nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote reflects on the events of his turbulent and lonesome life, exposes his internal struggles with the murder mystery case, but also the search
Smith 's innocence was undoubtedly drowned out by abuse and lack of love at a very early Each man survived an automobile accident in his past and subsequently suffered from traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI impacts a person 's social judgment, temperance, and impulse control (Stone). Both Smith and Hickock displayed these symptoms, meaning that mental illness played a significant role in the murder of the Clutter family. This theme and the many others found in In Cold Blood guide the storyline and reflect the points Capote was intending to make through his work.
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.