Sympathy In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

The ending of In Cold Blood effectively shows the cruelness of death and how arbitrarily it chooses its victims. Nancy Clutter, a smart and intelligent young woman, had a full, eventful life ahead of her, and with the firing of a gun all that was gone. William Zinsser once said “good nonfiction writing should leave you one provocative thought,” and Capote’s in this novel is that life will go on,even after death. Even though Susan Kidwell Nancy’s friendship and future plans died the night she was murdered, Susan kept moving on and now attending the University of Kansas. Even though life brings you pain and suffering where it feels like the end for you, it too shall pass and life will slowly, yet surely, get better and that is the impression

1) GOOGLE: On November 15, 1959 a family of four were murdered in their Kansas home by Richard Hicklock and Perry Smith. Herb Clutter was one of the victim in the murder. Herb Clutter was a wealthy farmer who had a lot of money saved in his farmhouse. Hickock and Smith had arrived to the Clutter while they were sleeping.

In Truman Capote’s nonfiction text, In Cold Blood, the Herbert Clutter family was brutally murdered by two men by the name of Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith. Once the deaths of Herb, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon Clutter were found, almost no clues were present to link Hickock and Smith as the killers. Despite In Cold Blood being nonfiction, Capote writes as if the text is a novel using tone and diction to manipulate the reader’s mood, and engaging the reader. In custom, nonfiction books are written to state facts, which discourage people from reading it as they feel that nonfiction is not as amusing as reading a fiction book.

The text shifts to nostalgia. Capote’s composition turns substantially more uncultured and unexpected. The small town imagery is gone and homicide appears and foreshadows future events. 6. Perry likes to lift weights but he looks odd because his legs are not developed and he is short.

In the story “In Cold Blood” the author Truman Capote uses a tone of scathing and tragic. “Those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare oh which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.” That shows how everything was so different around the neighborhood after they were brutally killed. “At the time not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them- four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.” After the accident, “Towns people, therefore sufficiently unfearful of each other.”

However, over the past few decades people have begun to question the validity of the objectivity of In Cold Blood. One such person is Joe Berlinger, the director of ‘Cold Blooded’ a documentary full of first hand accounts of the Clutter murders. In an interview in Mel Magazine, Joe Berlinger stated that they want their perspective “to allow them to set the record straight, and to air their disappointment in how Capote treated the family”(MEL). Berlinger’s documentary has spotlighted the vast difference between Capote’s accounting and that of the family’s. As Berlinger says, Capote’s over humanization of the criminals has done a disservice to the Clutters and caused the Clutter family to feel more like a side note.

Using a metaphor, Capote convinces readers that Perry is only a child in a grown man’s body. His habits of wetting his bed and crying for his father further

Although Capote exhibits Perry’s impulsive and heinous actions are due to his internal struggle, his ultimate goal is to illustrate Perry as a ruthless, manipulative murderer; therefore, he asserts that even the most monstrous of people can captivate compassion from others because of the diverse layers of their personality. To begin, Capote uses a paradox to highlight Perry’s internal struggle that lead him to doing such atrocities. Throughout the novel, Capote reveals to readers that Perry had a hard life growing up and most everyone in his family committed suicide, besides his only surviving sibling, Barbara. While Capote is talking about Perry’s family, he says, “They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense" (Capote 185).

In addition, Capote grabs the attention of the readers by effectively using diction and details to help engage more readers to the text. Capote utilizes diction to give a new image towards Dick and Perry, the two characters playing the criminal role. Capote gives a new dimension towards Perry by saying “I loved my father but there were times when this love and affection I had for him drained from my heart like wasted water. Whenever he would not try to understand my problems. Give me a little consideration & voice & responsibility.

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.

Whether that connection be positive or negative. It is done and cannot be avoided. Capote emphasizes the human side of these characters. He shows readers how the murderers who could commit such a crime are actual people. Not everyone is untouchable.

Capotes creates sympathy for Detective Dewey by allowing the reader to think about what it would be like to have family member who is extremely involved in work about the

Dick says to Andrews, “The trouble with you, Andy, you’ve got no respect for human life. Including your own.” (318). The description of Lowell Lee Andrews insane and ruthless character, make him a memorable secondary character. The technique Truman Capote use to characterize the killers is using the opinions and encounters of their families and the people they have met.

Truman Capote, who was born Truman Streckfus Persons on September 30, 1924, in New Orleans, Louisiana, was one of the most well-known American writer of his time. His ability to say clever and amusing things and his overt homosexuality kept him on television and in magazines as a major personality. He worked for The New Yorker magazine where he wrote articles and short stories. Many of his stories were about bizarre incidents and were adapted for stage and film. Later, he started to write nonfiction novels in which he combined fact and fiction.

Sympathy for All Bram Stoker says, “Though sympathy alone can't alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.” Sympathy is feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune. In Truman Capote's novel, he shows sympathy towards Nancy Clutter and Perry Smith. Truman Capote reveals many fantastic traits of Nancy to create sympathy for her when she is killed.