In the book “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote, Capote blantly describes the murderous acts of two men who killed an entire family they knew nothing about. The Clutters were good people who had no intention on hurting anyone. Dick and Perry, the murderers, had no reason to do this, meaning they had no motive for these actions and they can not be excused for their actions. In the beginning of the book, Capote introduces everyone to the Clutter Family, and a few pages further into the book he introduces everyone to Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. The Clutter family includes the Mr. and Mrs. Clutter and their four wonderful children. The youngest are two teenagers Nancy and Kenyon, and the oldest two adult daughters known as Eveanna and Beverly. Capote describes these people as calm, loving church going, cherishable innocent people and have not done anything to hurt anyone. Capote describes Dick as an intelligent murderer. No one understands why Dick and Perry killed them, but on the other hand, he portrays Dick and Perry as the perfect murderers knowing how to get away with it. Dick is motivated by carnal impulses and he is the mastermind and investigator to the murders, he isn’t very educated but he is street-wise and charming. Perry on the other hand grew up with difficult circumstances, he was abandoned …show more content…
For example Nancy’s tone is cheerful and she likes to help everyone ad she’s a star student in school. And everyone had a different tone towards everything. You can take tone as a matter of attitude. Some people have different tones on life no one has the same outlook on life. Capote has a bunch of selection of detail. With all of those strategies it brings this whole book together. He chose to write a book about a murder that happened in Holcomb,Kansas and he gave very specific details when he got to describing the
‘In Cold Blood’ demonstrates that compassion must be extended to both victims and their killers’ Discuss Truman Capote, through his celebrated nonfiction work ‘In Cold Blood’ depicts the events preceding and following the brutal murder of the prominent Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, 1959. The text clearly emphasizes that compassion must be extended to all victims of the violent crime. The term ‘victim’ is not exclusively reserved for the murdered but is extended to the family, friends and the entire community of Holcomb. To a lesser extent, Capote demonstrates that compassion should be shown to one of the killers. Capote challenges the reader to become compassionate towards Perry Edward Smith, despite knowing he murdered four innocent
Perry was the one who actually killed the Clutters, and Dick was just a bystander. Initially, Dick is the one comes up with the plan to kill the Clutters and when it’s time to kill the Clutters, he backs out. As the Clutters are going on with their everyday lives, the two men are driving to the town of Holcomb, where the family lives. A friend of Nancy’s from school, Nancy Ewalt, was dropped off at the Clutter’s to go to church. Upon entering the home, Nancy and Mrs. Kidwell, who works at the teacherage, realize the Clutters have not done anything they normally did on Sunday mornings.
During his career, Truman Capote had become extremely interested in crime and the origins of homicidal mentality. In 1959, Capote read a column in the newspaper that mentioned the investigation of the four murders in Kansas. From this column, he became motivated to write an account of a true murder case. The information in the novel is very credible considering the amount of research that the author performed.
The most important event in the book, In Cold Blood is the Clutter family being murdered. Without the Clutter family being murdered, there would be no book. Originally Dick and Perry’s plan was to rob the Clutter family, which wouldn’t have been as big of a deal to anyone except the people in Holcomb, Kansas. The whole book is centered around the killings so without the murders taking place this book would not have been written or it would have been written about a robbery, which would make it less interesting.
• Tone – Throughout this novel, Capote’s tone towards the case stayed objective yet compassionate. It seemed as if he wanted to capture every single moment of each character’s points of view. “Know what I think?” said Perry. “I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did.”
Although Capote seems to be explaining the progression of the ongoing investigation regarding Clutter family murder, his words delve deeper to explain the resounding effects that a senseless crime has had on the residents of Holcomb. Therefore, Capote depicts the shattering loss of innocence that these murders have caused to interrupt this small, tranquil community. Through structure, the author transforms the simple town of Holcomb into a dreary community. Capote introduces the second section of the book with a depiction of the leisurely activities of days past; “...Andy Erhart had spent long pheasant-hunting afternoons at River Valley Farm, the home of his good friend Herb Clutter, and often, on these sporting expeditions, he’d been accompanied
Truman Capote's introductory passage from In Cold Blood(1966), asserts the town of Holcomb as a run-down town that every reader has seen before. Capote approaches this idea of familiarity and comfort of Holcomb through effective irony, shifts of mood, and blatant foreshadowing; acknowledging that this town isn’t ideal based on appearance but the community is what makes it the town that it is. He works to establish a sense of familiarity in the reader in order to evoke more emotion as they read through and learn what happened to the Clutter family. While Capote wasn’t a member of the Holcomb community through his research he was able to grow close with members of the town and gain the knowledge needed to write this story intended for an audience
In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote in 1966 tells the story of the murder of a prominent family in 60’s Kansas. Capote traveled to the small town of Holcomb, and befriended many of the townsfolk and the detectives involved in the trial to tell the story of a violent event that shaped this community for the decade until the eventual conviction and execution of the killers. Because of information being told, Capote makes the choice of writing his novel as if it were a news report. This journalistic structure and word choice helps to establish the serious and dark tone of the novel.
Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, focuses on a quiet town in eastern Kansas where the slaughter of the Clutter family occurred. Although Perry is a brutal murderer, he is the result of his troublesome past; therefore, indicating that the past plays a part in the character of one's future self. Throughout his childhood, Perry has encountered abuse, separation, and abandonment from his home and it directly affected who he has become. The way that Capote writes about Perry’s past makes it evident that it was miserable.
They maintain the utmost integrity and virtue when it comes to family life and this is reflected in Mr. and Mrs. Clutter’s kind, giving, and somewhat perfect children. From this quote we can conclude that Capote wrote this novel to show how our culture of our childhood can affect our way to live,think ,and act. Which is the case of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. More than that, this quote contributes to the overall theme of The Dynamics of Family
How crazy would it be to interview criminals who murdered 4 people in cold blood? Well that’s exactly what Truman Capote did in this chilling book. In the novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote used different rhetorical strategies to create sympathy and influence the idea that there are always two sides to every story. Some of the mainly used rhetorical strategies throughout the novel were imagery, diction, tone, and pathos. Furthermore, Capote also illustrated sympathetical emotion towards both types of characters, the protagonists and antagonists.
Dick from In Cold Blood maintained that he was less guilty and did not deserve the death penalty. In stating this, Dick was not correct that he was less guilty. There are justifiable proofs that diminish his chances of being less guilty. These proofs are found within the book and can be represented through his demeanors and actions prior to and after the night. Richard Eugene Hickock (Dick) in In Cold Blood is just as guilty as Perry in that he had clearly displayed his intent for killing the Clutter family.
Although Dick’s childhood has been much more “fortunate” than Perry’s, Dick still grows up to be the more immoral, and cold-hearted human being. For instance, the day after Dick and Perry had murdered the Clutter family, Perry feels very remorseful and cannot get out of bed while Dick simply carries on as if nothing had happened, and visits him parents’ house: “Perry had merely fallen face down across the bed, as though sleep were a weapon that had struck him from behind… A few miles north, in the pleasant kitchen of a modest farmhouse, Dick was consuming a Sunday dinner… his mother, his father, his younger brother—were not conscious of anything uncommon in his manner” (73). Dick is an absolute sociopath; that is not fazed by murder or anything.
“‘I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did’” (Capote 108). This quote from Perry Smith (one of the infamous Clutter family murderers) was more accurate than one would think. In the novel In Cold Blood, Perry and his partner, Dick Hickock, murdered the family of Herbert William Clutter when they raided his house in search of a money safe in which Mr. Clutter did not own.
A genre classifies books with similar characteristics and style together. Nonfiction is a type of genre that means that all statements in that book are factual. In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote, is considered nonfiction, but there are many critics who think it contains elements of fiction. There are various flaws in the book that deny its nonfiction claim. Indeed, it is true that this book is based on a true account, but Capote’s descriptions seem too detailed to be true.