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How Does Truman Capote Used To Test Artistic Merit

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On November 15, 1959 the Clutter family was brutally murdered in their two story home in rural Holcomb Kansas. Holcomb was a small city in Finney County. Holcomb was so small everyone knew each other. If you lived in a small town where everyone knew each other and all of a sudden a murder of a family happened , who would you think did it? Would you think it was someone you knew, or someone that randomly passed by the town? In 1959 one of the most famous writers whose name was Truman Capote heard about the murder and headed to Holcomb for some investigation. Truman Capote planned on writing a paragraph but he found so much info he wrote a long novel. Capote’s point in writing this story progresses through the story. What was his real point of writing this story ? I believe his point was to test Artistic Merit. …show more content…

Criticism of art, music, film , literature or painting is the main concept of Artistic Merit. In the book In Cold Blood Capote turned reality into a type of fiction. In a 1966 interview with New York Times Capote stated “ as I thought of it… journalism is the most underestimated, the least explored of literary mediums,” He tried to paint a picture in our head that even though they commuted a crime they may not be bad people .
Secondly I think Capote's main concept was Artistic Merit is because from the book In Cold Blood on page two hundred forty four Perry stated “ I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentlemen. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” It seems ironic that he seemed to like the family which shows his motive was not because of hatred but from misdirected frustration . Which also shows a type of Artistic Measure because they knew the family was a very nice family but they had something else running through their heads or they pictured another turn out

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Capote’s Last Ditch Effort to Help Perry Although in In Cold Blood, Truman Capote is illustrating the aftermath of the murders, his prime motive is to humanize and create sympathy for Perry; therefore he asserts that the Law is biased and cruel to those who commit crimes. By utilizing amplification when describing the jury present at Dick and Perry’s murder trial, Capote is able to reveal the jury’s dangerous bias against the two. It consisted of “half a dozen farmers, a pharmacist, a nursery manager, an airport employee, a well driller, two salesmen, a machinist, and the manager of Ray’s Bowling Alley. They were all family men (several had five children or more) and were seriously affiliated with one or another of the local churches” (Capote 273).

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In the book, “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote takes us through the lives of the murderers and the murdered in the 1959 Clutter family homicide, which transpires in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. The first chapter, “The Last to See Them Alive,” vividly illustrates the daily activities of the Clutter family—Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon—and the scheming plot of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith up to point where the family is found tied up, and brutally murdered. In doing so, he depicts the picture-perfect town of Holcomb with “blue skies and desert clear air”(3) whose safety is threatened when “four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives”(5). Through the eyes of a picture perfect family and criminals with social aspirations, Capote describes the American Dream and introduces his audience to the idea that this ideal was no more than an illusion. Herbert Clutter: the character Capote describes as the epitome of the American Dream.

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Facts and Fiction: A Manipulation of Language in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood English is a fascinating and riveting language. Subtle nuances and adjustments can easily change the understanding of a literary work—a technique many authors employ in order to evoke a desired response from their readers. This method is used especially in In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, a literary work which details a true event about the murders of four members of the Clutter family in the small community of Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959. Although Capote’s 1966 book was a bestseller nonfiction and had successfully garnered acclaim for its author, there is still a great deal of confusion about the distinction between the factual and fictional aspects in the book.

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