Quotes From A Separate Peace By Truman Capote

• Tone – Throughout this novel, Capote’s tone towards the case stayed objective yet compassionate. It seemed as if he wanted to capture every single moment of each character’s points of view. “Know what I think?” said Perry. “I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did.” (110) Here Perry was confessing those feelings buried deep beneath him, that he felt some type of remorse after the crime he had committed. (Source A ). “In the interim, Mr. Ewalt had decided that perhaps he ought not to have allowed the girls to enter the house alone. He was getting out of the car to go after them when he heard the screams, but before he could reach the house, the girls were running toward him. His daughter shouted, “She’s dead!” and flung

Phrases like; “Remember Nancy’s teddy bear staring…” (60), “A dark two-storied building shaped like a coffin” (309), . Teddy bears cannot actually stare making this an uncomfortable feeling. The word coffin refers to death, the death that Dick and Perry are soon to face. “Jolene K. came over and I showed her how to make a cherry pie.” (52) This was the first sentence in Nancy’s journal entry. Just the words; cherry and pie are almost inappropriate and out of place because her death was just a few moments after such a happy thought. “Mountains. Hawks. Wheeling in a white sky.” (68) While Perry and Dick were driving all they saw and the only thing that was in their mind for just a few seconds were these natural aspects. These words let the reader clear their mind and bring them back to reality. I think Capote used pure words to show that these people still lived like any other human. These visuals are beautiful glimpses in such a horrific moment. Another reason why I think Capote’s writing was so

For example: “The house - for the most part designed by Mr. Clutter, who thereby proved himself a sensible and sedate, if not notably decorative, architect – had been in 1048 for forty thousand dollars (the resale was now sixty thousand dollars) situated at the end of a long, lane like driveway shaded by rows of Chinese elms, the impressed Holcomb; it was a place people pointed out.” (5) When reading these sentences I think the audience sped up their reading because they thought that something was going to happen at the end of the sentence. As Allyson Barys would say that: “The use of so many words gives only a slight hint toward a frantic and suspenseful tone.” I completely agree that Capote wanted to create that antsy feeling in his readers. “His shoulders were broad, his hair held its dark color, his square-jawed, confident face retained a healthy-hued youthfulness, and his teeth, unstained and strong enough to shatter walnuts, were still intact.” (3). He also did a fantastic job of describing his characters, enough for me to actually visualize Mr. Clutter in my head. He used many commas and hyphens to clearly state aspects of Mr. Clutter’s physical