In Cold Blood Setting Analysis

Although the author tries to designate Holcomb seem like a safe, unassailable place, Capote’s purpose of the book is to show even the most “out there” of places like Holcomb are vulnerable to the cruelty that is in the world; therefore, all of the world’s purity is capable of being disturbed and permanently scarred. The lonesome town of Holcomb had never experienced true trauma like the Clutter being killed before and it left the people in confusion and it left the people in fear as shown by Capote’s use of an analogy. While the Clutter’s bloodstained belongings are being burned, Capote explains the meaning of the fire to the people of Holcomb be saying, “How was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this--smoke, thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky?” (Capote 79). Before the death of the Clutters, the community was fearless because no one thought there was anything to fear, but …show more content…
A mix of repetition and diction in the form of word choice enhances Capote’s purpose of making a place and a family unlikely to fall victim to murder more shocking and more real. Detective Harold Nye spent the day analyzing the crime scene and was only able to come to this conclusion: “ ‘Of all the people in all the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered’ ” (Capote 85). The detective is completely baffled by how people like the Clutters could have had something this severe happen to them in a place that seemed so safe. All possibilities are considered by Nye to try to come up with a feasible reason as to why this family was deserving of murder and could not. Capote’s repetition of “all the” and the word choice of “the least likely” accentuates that even the best of people in the best of places are not totally safe from