Infamous

This paper will analyze the “insiders” and “outsiders” in “The Jew’s Beech Tree” written by Annette Elizabeth von Droste-Hülshoff in 1842 in Germany (Hughes 37). This story follows the life of Frederick Mergel who rises from the lower class to the upper class due to working for his wealthy uncle. However, murders happen throughout the story where Frederick is always suspected as the culprit and he soon goes missing after the murder of a Jewish man. In this story, we see examples of anti-Semitism…

Truman Capote’s true crime novel In Cold Blood tells the story of the murder of a prominent family in Kansas. The Clutters- Herb, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon were mercilessly murdered by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith on November 15, 1959. The murder of the Clutter family left the towns of Holcomb and Garden City, Kansas in shock and fear. Capote examines all aspects of the Clutter case throughout the novel. In 1967, director Richard Brooks brought Capote’s text to life in the film adaptation of In…

Truman Capote, an enthusiastic American novelist, published the nonfiction piece “In Cold Blood” with the intention of recreating the murders of the Clutter family, and its impact on Holcomb, Kansas. Capote blends imagery along with figurative language in order to manifest the tone of the passage from happy to mournful. The passage opens immediately with the device of imagery. Capote describes the Clutter’s house starting with Nancy’s bedroom “There were four bedrooms on the second floor, and…

Click, clack, click, clack, chink, clang, are the sounds heard as the sheriff walks into town. His boot spurs are smashing and the bar door swings open. Rooster, the sheriff, sits down for a drink. Later that day, a girl named Mattie Ross calls upon him. Her father has been murdered and she needs his help to track down the murderer. This is the beginning of True Grit by Charles Portis, a western novel first published in 1968. True Grit is told from the perspective of the Mattie. The question is…

Frequently, when a book is transformed into a motion picture, the motion picture has numerous deviations from the content. These differences are made by the executive and composing staff to make the story all the more engaging the group of onlookers trying to get more individuals to see it and in this manner profit. The most widely recognized distinction found in a motion picture is an increasing of the state of mind. For instance, when a scene should trigger a particular feeling from the viewer…

When an insidious wife-killer and wife-beater subsequently commit suicide, Joe “Dart” Dartelli is able to connect the two cases and realize that this was a homicide. In Chain of Evidence, he suspects his mentor, Walter Zeller, to be the murderer. It is up to Dart to prove if Zeller is in fact the killer, as he questions his own view on police and human ethics in an intense story of student versus mentor. While reading this novel, I made connections with Dart, questioned his decisions, and…

Rear Window is based on a story from the February 1942 issue of Dime Detective Magazine called "It Had to be Murder", written by Cornell Woolrich (under the pseudonym William Irish). Alfred Hitchcock, who was a longtime fan of Woolrich's pulp thrillers, was taken by the piece, but his goal in adapting it for the screen was to unify the narrative. Jeff doesn't have a girlfriend in Woolrich's version - Hitchcock and screenwriter John Michael Hayes added that in. They also invented Jeff's job as a…

Critical Analysis “She’s dead!” “It’s true, Daddy! Nancy’s dead!” (page 60). Truman Capote starts the book, In Cold Blood off by explaining how the innocent family of four, Mr. Clutter (Herb), Ms. Clutter (Bonnie), their daughter, Nancy Clutter, and their son, Kenyon Clutter, were brutally murdered in their home on November 15, 1959. But does not give a motive as to why they were killed. As Truman goes back and retraces the murder, he does a really good job of using a unique style to convey the…

Capote choosing Holcomb as our setting is important because, it shows how evil can invade even the most obscure locations. Happiness, safety and hard work are all traits associated with Holcomb, which is located in the homeland of America. Using Holcomb, Capote shows the reader no place in America is safe from violence. The first information Capote gives us about Holcomb is that it is quite small with a population, “numbering two hundred and seventy” (Capote 5). Having such a little population,…

Although the town of Holcomb is characterized by its innocence, Capote uses language to contrast the innocence and simplicity of the town before and after the murder; therefore, it makes the murder seem more personal. The essay begins in a simple and uneventful way to put into perspective how ordinary the town was before the murder. Right away, Capote explains the ordinarity of Holcomb: “the village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans…