Although, Holcomb is written as a picture-esque mid-west utopia in the first chapter of In Cold Blood, Capote uses personification, parallelism, and the inclusion of first hand accounts, to describe its shift from a neighborly society to one of locked doors in order to comment on how one event can completely alter a locations image. Through the use of personification, Capote describes the disillusion in the townspeople of Holcomb, product of the murder of the Clutter family. Capote writes that locks and bolts are the most popular item in a Garden City hardware store, and that the people disregarded brand identity just to have the security of the ownership of a lock. Capote latter writes, “Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in” (Capote 88), to show how paranoia has consumed the townsfolk are by expressing the false sense of security that a door lock provides. The use of “imagination can open any door”, implies that if someone needed to get through a locked door, …show more content…
Excerpts of this monologue include “So I say the sane thing to do is shut up. You live until you die. And it doesn't matter how you go; dead’s dead” (Capote 191), followed by, “So why carry on like a sackful of sick cats just because Herb Clutter got his throat cut?” (Capote 191). Mrs. Clare is directly targeting the townspeople’s current attitude, and criticizing it for what it is, cowardness. Mrs. Clare’s nihilistic view sheds light on why Holcomb should not have a month long reaction to an incident that did not directly affect anyone other than relatives to the clutters or the clutters themselves. The monologue can be viewed as an expressions of Capote's thoughts on the matter, and the monologue is included to vent this opinion of
The work In Cold Blood was written with extremely varying syntax. Sentence length became shorter and more urgent when it coincided with the plot, and the length became long and drawn out during sections with no real action. Truman Capote utilized telegraphic sentences after the murders, many being very similar to the quote above. The author inserts a four word sentence followed by a one word sentence and then a 3 word sentence, emphasizing the fact of the matter, the Clutter family truly was no more; the wholesome ideal family was never coming back and the citizens of Holcomb were coming to that realization. If Capote had written the sentence differently, the reader would not have felt the blunt truth that the townspeople did.
The author craftily frames Babe as an old, labrous figure. Nonetheless, the horse is linked to Nancy who, adversely, is a young, vibrant character. This polar opposite relationship paints a critical picture for the audience, especially during Mrs. Kidwell’s visions, because it augments the painstaking reality of loss of life. The expiring Babe illustrates a constant reminder of whom unjustly died beforehand, and visualizing Nancy riding Babe is a joyous, juvenile image that reinforces the melancholy associated with unfair death. The citizens of Holcomb know death better than anyone else, and Capote’s stimulating imagery suggests that death, by means of punishment for a crime, is not a solution to prior death.
How does Capote describe the town? Note the diction that is used. Consider the description on page 4: “Down by the depot, the postmistress, a gaunt woman who wears a rawhide jacket and denims and cowboy boots, presides over a falling-apart post office. The depot itself, with its peeling sulphur-colored paint, is
A Town in the Ruins Although Capote begins by conveying Holcomb as a simple, unknown place hidden ¨out there¨, he then portrays Holcomb as a distraught town that has been changed for the worst; therefore pinpointing that small-town murders are substantial in altering the movement and livelihood of any town, as it can become a murder itself. As to illustrate the events, Capote uses descriptive and parallel structure to describe the shift Holcomb has experienced after the taste of pure evil washed through. As Capote describes an occurrence on the Sixteenth of November, ¨..the quartet of old hunting companions had once again gathered to make the familiar journey, but in an unfamiliar spirit and armed with odd, non-sportive equipment--mops and
It’s Sunday and it’s the Clutter’s funeral. School is cancelled so all of the kids may go to the funeral. Over a thousand people attend the Clutter funeral. As Susan Kidwell stood there and stared at her best friend, Nancy Clutter, she couldn’t help herself from crying.
The mistrust and betrayal is real. Throughout the reading, I did not want to believe that Amy and Billy Holcombe had anything to do with Hollands death. The truth came out of the darkness not instantly but slowly revealing the truth of everything and why it happened. It’s so devastating and disturbing of how a woman could even do that to a human being. Holland had feelings and trusted Mrs. Amy.
Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” (2). Mrs. Mallard’s relationship with her husband seems to not be happy and upon his death, she has a shift of mentality and starts to experience joy and hope instead of grief.
In the beginning of the book, one of the first things Capote does is establish the setting. He describes the way Holcomb was before the murders and the way it was after. “At the time not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard the - four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives” (5). One of the most effective choices Capote makes to retell this real life event is word choice. There is something haunting about the way that he writes “ended six human lives”.
Although Capote conveys Holcomb as an even-tempered place, his true intent is to take advantage of its shift to insecurity; therefore he affirms evil corrupts the most perfect of places. Capote uses asyndeton to exemplify the new wicked found in Holcomb. Truman becomes personal with asyndeton, “where Nancy and her mother had been murdered in their beds, they acquired additional fuel for the impending fire --blood-soiled bed clothes, mattresses, a bedside rug, a Teddy-bear doll” (Capote 78). Relating to the Clutters as the elements listed is more personal. The town loses their innocence with the burning of personal items.
As Dewey arrives into a diner Capote provides insight into what this case is doing to him: “In fact, during the past three weeks Dewey had dropped twenty pounds. His suits fitted as though he had borrowed them from a stout friend, and his face, seldom suggestive of his profession, was now not at all so; it could have been that of an ascetic absorbed in occult pursuits”(Capote 149). Capote provides us with a very vivid representation of Dewey’s figure to indicate that this case is destroying him from the inside out. With this idea of Dewey falling apart readers can draw a parallel between him and Holcomb in the sense that Holcomb is “losing weight”, Holcomb doesn’t fit into its “suit”. This evil has murdered the very idea of a “safe”
Those who knew about the Clutter family’s death were miserable: “Mostly, we just drove around in his old Ford. Up and down the highway … The radio was always playing; we didn't have anything to say ourselves” (Capote 94). Susan Kidwell and Bobby Rupp were together and they were described in a depressed way, which set the tone. The kids didn’t live their regular lifestyle after the death, which gave tone to the reading.
In the novel “In Cold Blood” , Truman Capote uses the Clutter family to represent the rising middle class in the nineteen fifties. The book is about a homicide murder in Holcomb Kansas on November fifteen nineteen fifty nine. This was the last day anyone would see the Clutter family alive. The Clutter’s were an average middle class American family in the nineteen fifties, nearly perfect. The Clutter family owned their own land in Holcomb with a big house away from mostly everything and everyone.
Scene 1 - Village Truman Capote characterizes the Village of Holcomb is a vast, desolate place where nothing of significance occurs very often to foreshadow and bring to light the drast contrast between that and the fact that the reader knows the horrific murder takes place there. He promptly builds up the tone of the Holcomb as a picturesque place where everything is perfect and nothing ever goes wrong. Capote sets it up as a ‘perfect’ place only to later poke cracks in its perfection, exposing its flaws. Ultimately the exposure of these flaws will lead up to the murder, the one drastic twist that eventually crumble the entire foundation of the perfect little village. Scene 2 - Fam
According to traditional gender roles, the father is the provider for the family. He is expected to work hard to support and provide for his family’s essential needs: food, shelter, and clothing. Burdened with the responsibility of ensuring the security of the other members of his family, he is sometimes perceived as a distant and detached figure, in contrast with the stereotypical warm and nurturing image of the mother. The father 's burden is further compounded by a socially-perceived expectation that males have to be less emotional as a sign of strength of character. Robert Hayden’s sonnet “Those Winter Sundays” explores some of these dynamics by examining the emotional distance between a father and the son for whom he provides.
When Richard’s heard the news of her husband’s death, he assumed Mrs. Mallard would be devastated. While everyone knew Mrs. Mallard was “afflicted with heart trouble” (57), him and her sister, Josephine, wanted to give her the news with “great care” (57). Josephine broke the news to Mrs. Mallard in “broken sentences”