Argumentative Essay On In Cold Blood

The rich get richer and the poor stay poor, but is the resentment towards the rich enough to kill an entire family? The 1950’s was an exceptional decade to live in, World War II had ended and the United States saw strong GDP growth, low inflation and low unemployment. Many citizens were living a satisfied life and thought everyone was too. When Truman Capote, an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor, released his novel In Cold Blood the United States was in shock. He was best known by the world as the man who invented the nonfiction novel. No one had seen a novel such as In Cold Blood due to the fact that the book was about a real world situation and included all the creative devices and techniques a fictional novel uses. The

Capote goes as far as writing about what their minds were thinking during the murders and exposes the capacity for violence and cruelty within all of us. For instance when Dick and Perry broke into the house Perry said “He says he don’t have any safe. I knew right then it was true” (237). To then moments later shooting Mr. Clutter in the head claiming “I thought of that goddam dollar. Silver dollar. The shame. Disgust. And they’d told me never to come back to Kansas. But I did not realize what I’d done till I heard the sound…I handed the knife to Dick. I said, ‘Finish him. You”ll feel better’ (224). Perry knew that Mr. Clutter had no safe, overwhelmed by the shame he decided to kill Mr. Clutter and told Dick to do the same to feel better. Perrys actions proves the human instinct is to do anything to protect self-preservation. Yes any murderer is inherently evil but the citizens of Holcomb are no different. The citizens are upset that these two men took the lives of a family but wish to punish them with the same fate. The lottery analysis, “Deconstructing the Binary of Good and Evil: An Exploration of In Cold Blood and Columbine” by Jamie R. Pledger said it best, “the authors question society’s definition of good and evil. These texts reveal society’s hypocrisy of its judgments and force it to rethink definitions of good and evil and ultimately ask how to

The audience can see the evil that resides in humans with Capote's writing technique of going into the midst of the killers and citizens of holcomb kansas. Human morals are better understood by all . The readers see how mental health affects a person's evil nature and morals by connecting the behavior of the killers to symptoms of the mental disorders. In Cold Blood still has a sense of relevance in today's society as it is one of the must reads for AP literature. Truman Capote's work of art is still relevant today because of the themes and struggles a person can have and the consequences of not seeking help. In a report by Sara Baila-Bigné, “Negative Empathy in Narrative: Humanizing Evil in In Cold Blood'' Bigné states, “These constraints that limit the empathic capacity are due, in many occasions, to an “internalized code of behavior” (2011: 318) that morally restricts our imagination when it comes to humanizing others.” (9) The statement by Bigné reveals how hard humanizing people is. Capote's work humanized the killers in a way that displays human acts and how mental illness can have a negative effect on one's actions. It is important to keep the Literary work of art that is In Cold Blood relevant to keep society open minded about mental health and seeking help to treat