Randolph Skully's Veto Rhetorical Analysis

As previously mentioned, in the end Randolph succeeds in controlling Joel, but the way he does so confines Joel to Randolph himself, and likewise to the Landing. Randolph manipulates every significant situation in which Joel takes part. He disregards Joel’s letters to his Aunt Ellen. Because Randolph does not send them, it consequently makes Joel feel as if she has abandoned him like his father did when he was born. “But Ellen had never answered his letters. The hell with her. He didn’t care any more. His own bloodkin. And she’d made so many promises. And she’d said she loved him. But she forgot. All right, so had he, sure, you forget, o.k., who cares? And she’d said she loved him” (Capote 185-186). Because Randolph has control over Amy, he uses her to control both Ed Sansom and Joel. She knew Randolph was sending for Joel, writing as if Randolph was his father, yet said nothing of it, nor tried to stop Randolph. Anything Randolph does, Amy is indifferent to, accepts, or ignores. Because of the control set on her, Randolph is able to use her as a tool in confining Joel. Joel becomes confined to Skully’s Landing essentially through Randolph, seeing the

In an interview, Capote commented, “Most of the time, the relationships between white people and colored people in the South were kind. But then there would be that moment when you saw [Negros] stepping off the sidewalk for [white people] to pass” (Steinem 103). Much like a caged bird, Zoo accepts her confinement as reality, and she feels that she has no other option than to do so because of how people treat her. This feeling arises through the treatment of both people she loves, such as her ex-husband who tried to kill her by cutting her throat, and by those who she did not know, such as the three white men who raped her when she began to head north (Capote 64,