On November 15, 1959 the Clutter family was brutally murdered in their two story home in rural Holcomb Kansas. Holcomb was a small city in Finney County. Holcomb was so small everyone knew each other. If you lived in a small town where everyone knew each other and all of a sudden a murder of a family happened , who would you think did it? Would you think it was someone you knew, or someone that randomly passed by the town? In 1959 one of the most famous writers whose name was Truman Capote heard about the murder and headed to Holcomb for some investigation. Truman Capote planned on writing a paragraph but he found so much info he wrote a long novel. Capote’s point in writing this story progresses through the story. What was his real point of writing this story ? I believe his point was to test Artistic Merit. …show more content…
Criticism of art, music, film , literature or painting is the main concept of Artistic Merit. In the book In Cold Blood Capote turned reality into a type of fiction. In a 1966 interview with New York Times Capote stated “ as I thought of it… journalism is the most underestimated, the least explored of literary mediums,” He tried to paint a picture in our head that even though they commuted a crime they may not be bad people .
Secondly I think Capote's main concept was Artistic Merit is because from the book In Cold Blood on page two hundred forty four Perry stated “ I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentlemen. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” It seems ironic that he seemed to like the family which shows his motive was not because of hatred but from misdirected frustration . Which also shows a type of Artistic Measure because they knew the family was a very nice family but they had something else running through their heads or they pictured another turn out
A murder was struck in the small, quiet town of Fall River, accusation were made all around the town. Who do you think would do this? The case of the Borden murderers has not yet caught the culprit but, people suspect the daugher of the victims Lizzie Borden to be the murderess. I believe Lizzie Borden did not kill her father and stepmother. No evidence against her was found, she loved her family, and had an alibi/testimony that was convincing.
In this passage, Capote utilizes asyndeton to achieve his purpose of elaborating Dick’s character, developed by describing Dick’s familial relationship. For instance, the syntax of this excerpt is the succession of two sentence fragments, said by Mrs. Hickock to Mr. Nye, that offers two reasons why Dick might not have written any mail to Mrs. Hickock. The lack of a conjunction to connect the two fragments that both start with “of” demonstrates the explicit repetition of similar ideas, emphasizing that Dick is truly ashamed of how he hurt his family, according to Mrs. Hickock. In Standard English, distinct words, phrases, or clauses forming a list are typically joined together by conjunctions; that Mrs. Hickock’s list of two reasons lacks the
On January 4, 1960 it is said that Perry Smith and Richard Hickock are both being held in connection with the Clutter family murder. The sheriff’s office and the police department were alerted to pick them up on sight. News sources found out that the two men picked up in Las Vegas were probably the pair that killed the Clutter family. They were asked to not reveal the story at the time because it might mess with the investigation in Las Vegas. The two men were arrested in Las Vegas on a parole violation charge.
Capote had the ability to switch between different writing styles, and it is clear that his early life influenced his early writing. Before the later half of Capote's career had started off, Capote dabbled in the film industry. Biography notes, "In 1953, Capote landed some film work. He wrote some of Stazione Termini (later released as Indiscretion of an American Wife in the United States), which starred Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift. His best screenplay, was done years later when he adapted the Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw into The Innocents (1961)."
In the book, “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote takes us through the lives of the murderers and the murdered in the 1959 Clutter family homicide, which transpires in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. The first chapter, “The Last to See Them Alive,” vividly illustrates the daily activities of the Clutter family—Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon—and the scheming plot of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith up to point where the family is found tied up, and brutally murdered. In doing so, he depicts the picture-perfect town of Holcomb with “blue skies and desert clear air”(3) whose safety is threatened when “four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives”(5). Through the eyes of a picture perfect family and criminals with social aspirations, Capote describes the American Dream and introduces his audience to the idea that this ideal was no more than an illusion. Herbert Clutter: the character Capote describes as the epitome of the American Dream.
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.
This demonstrates his reaction to learning, his feelings and willingness to become like a person, demonstrating that his murders were not the work of a pure evil
“He did not smoke, and of course he did not drink; indeed, he had never tasted spirits, and was inclined to avoid people who had—a circumstance that did not shrink his social circle as much as might be supposed, for the center of that circle was supplied by the members of Garden City's First Methodist Church,a congregation totaling seventeen hundred ,most of whom were as abstemious as Mr. Clutter could desire.’’ (10) ( Culture and Community ) Capote used this quote to illustrate the culture of the village of Holcomb, where Mr.Clutter lived and how the social life of a religious family is rooted in their church. This quote represents culture, because is trying to tell us that people in Holcomb should live a life according to their religion ,because their actions affect their social circle and their community.
The demonstration of the narrator's imagination unconsciously leads his own thoughts to grow into a chaotic mess that ultimately ends in a death. By murdering, it’s his own way of finding peace. He is portrayed as being a sadist, sick man with an unnatural obsession for
Truman Capote’s novel, In Cold Blood epitomizes the shifting sentiments related to the murder of the Clutter family which range from terror, to sorrow, to pride, and all mixed emotions in between. Yet through Capote’s particular descriptions about each character, the connection between their feelings and their actions become further clarified. In effect, the readers experience feelings of sympathy for the victims, their friends and family, the investigators, and even the brutal murders of the innocent family. In order to craft this association, Capote employs a pathos appeal to amplify the audience’s ability to sympathize with each and every character.
In In Cold Blood, the issue over the death penalty is prominent. Did Perry and Dick deserve to die? Should the severity of one’s crime determine one’s fate? Although Truman Capote writes the novel in a straightforward, “from a distance” way, he conveys, through his characters, theme, and plot development, that the death penalty is an issue that should be looked at from all sides and that the legal system itself is the real issue at hand, and that the death penalty is used as a means to suppress the distress and indignation of the citizens surrounding the case, instead of suppressing the victim himself.
Facts and Fiction: A Manipulation of Language in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood English is a fascinating and riveting language. Subtle nuances and adjustments can easily change the understanding of a literary work—a technique many authors employ in order to evoke a desired response from their readers. This method is used especially in In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, a literary work which details a true event about the murders of four members of the Clutter family in the small community of Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959. Although Capote’s 1966 book was a bestseller nonfiction and had successfully garnered acclaim for its author, there is still a great deal of confusion about the distinction between the factual and fictional aspects in the book.
Capote’s Last Ditch Effort to Help Perry Although in In Cold Blood, Truman Capote is illustrating the aftermath of the murders, his prime motive is to humanize and create sympathy for Perry; therefore he asserts that the Law is biased and cruel to those who commit crimes. By utilizing amplification when describing the jury present at Dick and Perry’s murder trial, Capote is able to reveal the jury’s dangerous bias against the two. It consisted of “half a dozen farmers, a pharmacist, a nursery manager, an airport employee, a well driller, two salesmen, a machinist, and the manager of Ray’s Bowling Alley. They were all family men (several had five children or more) and were seriously affiliated with one or another of the local churches” (Capote 273).
The novel, In Cold Blood, is an anomaly in the literary paradigm. The author, Truman Capote, designed his novel in a way that made it unique when compared to others. His fundamental purpose was to present the problem of American violence and the fragility of the American Dream and how it can be so easily shattered. In order to portray his purpose, he used many rhetorical devices including syntax, diction, tone, ethos, logos and pathos. These devices allowed Capote’s novel to be different from the spectrum of other non-fiction novels and to support his purpose.
The "In Cold Blood" book was published in 1965 by Truman Capote, and after a year, in 1966, that book became the best-selling book. We can say that that book is special and unique from any other true-crime book because of Capote's new writing style, because of the strangeness of the murder, or simply because of the thrilling feeling of crime books. Those things made the "In Cold Blood" book a best-selling book. Truman Capote created a new writing style called the "nonfiction novel" by combining journalism and creative writing (source 2). That alone probably made the book stand out from the rest of the true-crime books since the other writers are possibly using the same writing style over and over again.