In Cold Blood

are 16,000 homicides per year on average. Cruelty follows people in life, regardless of where they are or who they are. In the book, Night, Elie Wiesel tells the horrors of concentration camps from his point of view as a survivor. In the novel, In Cold Blood, Truman Capote shines a new light on the 1959 murder of the Herbert Clutter family in the small community of Holcomb, Kansas. In both of these texts inhumanity is shown in different ways and is brought on by different motivations. These…

Truman Capote’s 1965 novel In Cold Blood, was based upon the true events of the Clutter family murder case, that occurred in the year 1959, in the very modest town of Holcomb, Kansas. The story revolves around the two insensitive murderers, Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene Hickock, whom have had the past of growing up in completely opposite home environments from one another, and the detective Alvin Dewey, who goes out of his ways to try his best to capture these criminals. Although Perry…

urges him to tell of his life and Odysseus gives in. As Odysseus tells of his travels in a flashback, he recounts his time at sea as if a bard were telling the story. This manipulation of time, similar to the approach used in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, helps the author or raconteur to devise a more complex and intriguing tale. Capote expidites time, as well as impedes or reverses…

Truman Capote’s first non-fiction novel, “In Cold Blood”, recaps the events around the murder of the Clutter family, by focusing on the two murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. Throughout the book, Capote acknowledges the perpetrators without a bias perspective, he does this by giving the backstory of both Dick and Perry. Capote does not just focus on the murder, but instead introduces Dick and Perry as two people who made a horrible mistake and deserve sympathy. However, if you sympathize…

The nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, entirely reconstructed a horrific crime scene while depicting the lives of the runaway murderers. The author, Truman Capote, uses montage (a form of writing that switches back and forth) to allow the readers to see into the lives of the killers and the petrified people of Holcomb, Kansas. On November 15, 1959, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith brutally murdered Herbert, Bonnie, Kenyon and Nancy Clutter in their farmhouse. Floyd Wells, a previous cell mate of…

well-loved Clutters who had displayed much promise in her future. Truman Capote is the author who becomes captivated by the case and follows the investigation, interviewing and paying close attention to detail in his narration of it. In his novel, In Cold Blood, Capote paints depth in the characters involved with the Clutters and produces sympathy for each character within his account. Specifically, Capote depicts Perry Smith as a mixed-race man who feels that the world is against him and Nancy…

form his own identity, and leave an illustrious legacy. In addition, these sentiments also go both ways as people raised in more adequate households are equally as capable of creating a negative identity for themselves. This occurs in the novel In Cold Blood through the character of Dick Hickock. Hickock’s family was by no means wealthy, but they were able to make a living and give Dick a fairly good upbringing. As teenager Dick was “an outstanding athlete”, and “a pretty good student, too”…

Through the use of rhetorical strategies, Truman Capote manipulates the reader’s emotions by portraying Perry Smith in In Cold Blood as a sympathetic character. Perry Smith, along with his partner Dick Hickock, murder the Clutters, a well loved family in the town of Holcomb, Kansas. This small town consists of people, who immediately outkast the murders because they only understand their own lives, and nothing outside of Holcomb. Although there are two murderers, this rhetorical analysis will…

In Cold Blood, written in 1966, is arguably Truman Capote’s greatest piece of literary work. The novel regarded the 1959 murder of four family members who lived in the small community of Holcomb, Kansas. This remarkable novel was noted for the author’s exceptional use of several literary elements. In an excerpt describing the small town in the story, Capote demonstrated his elaborate use of stylistic elements, such as diction, imagery, and tone. Using those tools, Capote characterized Holcomb as…

In his novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote explores a significant controversy in the American justice system: the death penalty. He carefully describes a dramatic incident in Holcomb, Kansas when four members of the respected Clutter family are killed. When the murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, are finally caught after an extensive investigation, they are given the death sentence. Through a historically accurate and compelling novel, Capote criticizes capital punishment by humanizing Perry…