In Cold Blood Personification

Although, Holcomb is written as a picture-esque mid-west utopia in the first chapter of In Cold Blood, Capote uses personification, parallelism, and the inclusion of first hand accounts, to describe its shift from a neighborly society to one of locked doors in order to comment on how one event can completely alter a locations image. Through the use of personification, Capote describes the disillusion in the townspeople of Holcomb, product of the murder of the Clutter family. Capote writes that locks and bolts are the most popular item in a Garden City hardware store, and that the people disregarded brand identity just to have the security of the ownership of a lock. Capote latter writes, “Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in” (Capote 88), to show how paranoia has consumed the townsfolk are by expressing the false sense of security that a door lock provides. The use of “imagination can open any door”, implies that if someone needed to get through a locked door,

Excerpts of this monologue include “So I say the sane thing to do is shut up. You live until you die. And it doesn't matter how you go; dead’s dead” (Capote 191), followed by, “So why carry on like a sackful of sick cats just because Herb Clutter got his throat cut?” (Capote 191). Mrs. Clare is directly targeting the townspeople’s current attitude, and criticizing it for what it is, cowardness. Mrs. Clare’s nihilistic view sheds light on why Holcomb should not have a month long reaction to an incident that did not directly affect anyone other than relatives to the clutters or the clutters themselves. The monologue can be viewed as an expressions of Capote's thoughts on the matter, and the monologue is included to vent this opinion of