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Conventional Boundaries In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

450 Words2 Pages

Passage 2: Page 28-30

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood challenges the conventional boundaries of the true crime genre and plumbs the psychological and emotional depths of the Clutter family murders. Capote’s masterpiece incorporates diction to create a sympathetic tone and juxtapose the brutality of the murders in which he foreshadows.
The included descriptions of Bonnie Clutter evokes sadness or pity from the reader. Capote introduces Bonnie Clutter in such a way the readers might assume she is a mentally unstable woman that remains bedridden and miserable. Bonnie suffers spells of postpartum depression after the births of her four children, and she worries about her children remembering her “as a kind of ghost” (30). Capote describes Bonnie’s room in a way that it is symbolic of her depression, which draws readers to feel sympathetic toward her. Capote starts with, “The room she so seldom left was austere…” and continues to portray her room as “impersonal,” to the point “a visitor might have thought it permanently unoccupied” (29, 30). The impersonal qualities of her room …show more content…

Capote indicates that Mrs. Clutter will not survive “ …this final day of her life…” (30). The included description of Bonnie’s pure white nightgown foreshadows the brutality of the murders, as Capote describes how soiled it is after she is shot. The contrast of Bonnie freezing, to her room being stifling also dramatizes the murder that will later take place in her bedroom. When Wilma Kidwell opens Bonnie’s bedroom door, “the heat gathered inside...” but Bonnie was “freezing” (29). Capote also includes a description of Bonnie’s beside table stating that there is only a Bible, and it ironically opened to the admonition, “Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.” This description foreshadows the impending events of that night and is ironic to the Clutter family’s

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In Cold Blood Rhetorical Analysis Typically upon hearing about a murder, especially a brutal and unwarranted one, we find ourselves feeling a great sense of disgust for the murderer or murderers who committed these crimes; however, in Truman Capote’s novel In Cold Blood, the lives and experiences of the murderers, particularly Perry Smith, are displayed in a way the makes you feel pity for him as well as the victims. When comparing Capote’s Novel to a typical news article on a similar topic it is easy to see the that Capote's style varies from typical journalism. An article written by Frances Robles and Nikita Stewart titled “Dylan Roof’s Past Reveals Trouble at Home and School,” discusses the childhood and background of Dylann Roof, a twenty-one

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The ending of In Cold Blood effectively shows the cruelness of death and how arbitrarily it chooses its victims. Nancy Clutter, a smart and intelligent young woman, had a full, eventful life ahead of her, and with the firing of a gun all that was gone. William Zinsser once said “good nonfiction writing should leave you one provocative thought,” and Capote’s in this novel is that life will go on,even after death. Even though Susan Kidwell Nancy’s friendship and future plans died the night she was murdered, Susan kept moving on and now attending the University of Kansas. Even though life brings you pain and suffering where it feels like the end for you, it too shall pass and life will slowly, yet surely, get better and that is the impression

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