Compare And Contrast In Cold Blood

“In Cold Blood”-Comparison
In 1959, the Kansas town of Holcomb was left horrified after the murders of the Clutter family. The shocking murder caught both the attention and hearts of those who learnt of it. In 1966, Truman Capote brilliantly captured the acts of the murders in his book “In Cold Blood”. Shortly after in 1967, Richard Brooks released the adaptation to Truman’s book, “In Cold Blood” which uniquely captures the essence of the murdered and the murderers. Capote and Brooks depicted the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock in two comparably different lights While observing both works of “In Cold Blood” various differences and commonalities stand out including; the portrayal of Mrs. Clutter’s or Bonnie’s illness, how the murderers

One may notice Brooks depiction of the family is so notably pure it’s difficult to believe it as genuine. The movie serves a shallow introduction into Mrs. Clutter’s illness, unlike Capote’s novel where he addresses her illness to a deeper extent. While in the movie Mr. Clutter describes his wife as “not well”, Capote decided to include details such as Bonnie being an “on and off psychiatric patient” who suffers from “little spells”. The movie depicts Bonnie’s illness as something non debilitating while the novel shows her illness as seemingly crippling. For instance, while being questioned by the police subsequent to being arrested Perry quoted Mr. Clutter saying “she’s been sick for years and years, and she was just beginning to get a little better, but an incident like this might cause her to have a setback” (Capote 241). The fact Mr. Clutter would bother bringing up such a topic is interesting in the way of knowing he is selfless enough to ask a favor not for himself, but instead for his wife in such a time of crisis. While Capote’s novel has the above quote

Capote addresses the Clutters personal lives to a much greater extent than Brooks did in his novel. The amount of time spent learning about the Clutters personal lives adds to how much you feel for the murders. One who has both read the book and watched the movie will realize the feeling of sorrow for the Clutter’s death becomes more intense with how much knowledge is known about the family. While reading the novel the reader gets a thorough introduction into the lives of the Clutter’s. Although the movie allows the audience to view a short glimpse of the family’s daily life before the murder this is simply not enough background to completely pull in the audience. Of course, one feels a pang of sorrow after the murder scenes, but nothing like the pain of reading the murders from Capote’s novel. Adding on to the lack of personal information of the Clutter’s is the brief analysis of the towns reactions towards the murders. One of the townspeople is written as saying, “What I hope is, I hope they keep’ em locked up good. I won’t feel easy knowing they’re in our vicinity’ (Capote 231). Observing how those who live relatively close to the murdered family react gives an impression of how this impacted those in the general area. Providing this information in the text adds to the overall pathos of the text and emotional response of the audience, both towards the family