Rhetorical Use Of Pathos In In Cold Blood By Truman Capote

The book, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, is about the murder of a family in a small town named Holcomb, located in Kansas. Throughout the book Capote was explaining how it happened, who did it, and how they figured out who committed the murders. Truman Capote used a wide range of rhetorical strategies in his book. His purpose for writing this book was to create sympathy for the murders, which he did achieve by using rhetorical strategies. He displays the passion towards the subject and how importantly he wanted to get the idea across that the murders deserved sympathy while doing it in an impressive way which will be explained. One of the major things that contributes to the sympathy of the murders and lets readers know there is two sides …show more content…
Capote uses a lot of this to get the point of sympathy across for the murders. Pathos all comes down to if it was effective enough to help the reader connect with the text. If pathos was not used correctly, the audience won't feel an emotional connection to the text. Capote has problem pursuing this feeling. Another thing that relates to pathos is ethos. Ethos comes along with pathos to make the argument stronger, but they aren't always used together in writing. Ethos is the credibility that the author has. Is Truman Capote trustworthy to be taking this information from on this “true” event. Capote was involved with the Clutters case. He chose this case to do research on and right a book about. In fact, the author of this book went to the scene and the town to get a closer emotional connect to the story that he was beginning to write. If Capote went though all of this to write a book, then the audience will have feelings towards the murders if they do their research on how this book came …show more content…
There is three kinds of irony in literature but the one used more religiously in this book is situational irony. Situational irony is where actions or events have the opposite result from what is expected or what is intended. Capote starts off the book exampling the town that they are in and how the people in the town are, essentially, he is explaining how such a peaceful town Holcomb is and crime free it was thought to be. Although everyone had this idea, it wasn't actually what happened. No one expected the murders of the clutters to happen, but it did. That is what makes situational irony so important in creating the feeling of sympathy towards the murders. He explains the murders in such a way that is jaw dropping to the