Analysis Of In Cold Blood By Truman Capote

Capote’s Style in In Cold Blood Truman Capote, notorious for his fiction works, employed a series of complex literary techniques to further enhance his novels. He is often praised as a literary genius, as his writings are compelling with deep inner workings. This is especially true for one of his most praised novels, In Cold Blood, a narrative nonfiction about a murder-robbery in 1959. In this novel, Capote implements many narrative devices that build suspense and strike fear into its readers. In one specific scene of the story, two women, Mrs. Sadie Truitt and her daughter, Mrs. Myrtle Clare, are slowly discovering what happened to the Clutters, their neighbors who were murdered just days before. The passage begins with a description of Sadie Truitt and her job of collecting mail sacks from the trains that deliver the town its mail. She tells us how it's rough, yet she enjoys it. For the first half of this selection, Capote uses rhetorical devices such as alliteration

Not only does it set up a baseline for how many people reacted to the Clutters’ death, it enforces a suspenseful and somber mood for the entire rest of the book. The metaphor at the end of the passage about eternity also puts the Clutters’ murder into a deeper perspective. It makes the reader question themselves, a theme that rings true throughout the story. Mrs Clare’s immediate suspicions of who the murderer could be establish a helpless tone, as to the townspeople, the murderer could literally be anyone. This is shown by Mrs. Clare going so far as to saying it could even be Mrs. Truitt, her own mother. While this is a hyperbole, it serves to show the readers that the investigation began utterly clueless, with no leads to anywhere. This effectively creates an even larger aura of suspense, as the readers are left wondering if the killers are ever going to be caught, and if the Clutters’ will receive their