In Cold Blood Summer Assignment

Angel Zhang

Mr. Hodges, Mr. Morris

ENG2HP

12 August 2015

Capote Summer Assignment

1. Though the book In Cold Blood is a non-fictional account of a murder case, the author uses strange combinations of words to create a more surreal description of the whole situation. For example, Perry’s intense urge to kill the driver as they were hitchhiking is translated into the strange word combination as, “He thought he might vomit, or faint; he felt certain he would if Dick delayed "the party" much longer. The light was dimming, the road was straight, with neither house nor human being in view - nothing but land winter-stripped and as somber as sheet iron,” (107). The description of the land creates an ominous scene; a perfect setting to commit a murder. With the simple descriptions in the beginning of the quote, the last description stands out, highlighting the fact that a murder is

Though Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is a non-fiction book, it is also categorized as a novel due to the different techniques the author uses throughout. Many of the scenes told in the book have fictitious elements to it, such as variations in sentence length. For example, some sentences are written with one word only, “A cloudburst. Rain. Buckets of it. Dick ran,” (187). Non-fiction books usually use language that is sophisticated and lengthy. Unlike the “normal” non-fiction book, In Cold Blood uses short and precise sentences to create a fictitious feel to it. Another of Capote’s techniques is described in another question; the use of different point of views. In non-fiction books, the point of views don’t usually change from chapter to chapter. In Cold Blood’s use of different point of views makes the book flow more like a novel than a non-fiction book. By using omniscient in one chapter and a character’s in another, different angles of the story is told, making it seem more like a novel. The usage of techniques native to fictional books, In Cold Blood can also be characterized as a