Perspective In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘perspective’ as “The relation or proportion in which the parts of a subject are viewed by the mind; as perceived from a particular mental point of view”. This indicates that perspective is subjective, and therefore that all agents possess a sense of perspective. We might also infer that as perspective is defined as being from ‘a particular mental point of view’, that each of our perspectives are unique and personal, and surely have been formed as a result of our experiences up to the present moment. Perspective is crucial in allowing us to work with factual information. As human beings we are capable of not only learning and recalling a fact, but also of deriving our own opinions on it; on its validity,

The character perspective shifts between several characters throughout, illustrating the difference that perspective can make to any topic, as Nietzche says; “there are no facts, only interpretations” . In Cold Blood also led to me to think about how easily our perspective can be changed. While I have established that perspective is important to both the Arts and to History, it begs a question about what happens to our previous knowledge when our perspective changes. I am loathe to say that the knowledge I gained studying To Kill a Mockingbird at prep-school is now redundant having looking at it again a few years ago from a more mature, more informed perspective, but I am afraid to say that it has. This has dramatic implications to the study of the Arts. Where in History theories are grounded around sources which always retain a degree of validity, in a subject like English where the entirety of our knowledge is perspective based and moderated by logic, there are grave implications for the longevity of any knowledge that we acquire in this area. While perspective is also essential to the pursuit of the Arts as it is in History, here that knowledge has substantially less weight under the threat that our knowledge may only be temporary as our perspective on the world inevitably