Rhetorical Analysis Of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

How crazy would it be to interview criminals who murdered 4 people in cold blood? Well that’s exactly what Truman Capote did in this chilling book. In the novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote used different rhetorical strategies to create sympathy and influence the idea that there are always two sides to every story. Some of the mainly used rhetorical strategies throughout the novel were imagery, diction, tone, and pathos. Furthermore, Capote also illustrated sympathetical emotion towards both types of characters, the protagonists and antagonists. Additionally, Capote expressed the idea of there being two sides to every story for both the protagonist and antagonist. By doing so, he used a unique writing style to help develop the story. In Cold

All throughout this book, Capote used imagery, for example “...simply an aimless congregation of buildings divided in the center by the main-line tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad, a haphazard hamlet bounded on the south by a brown stretch of the Arkansas (pronounced ‘Ar-kan-sas’) River, on the north by a highway, Route 50, and on the east and west by prairie lands and what fields” (3). By using imagery at the start of the book, it helps you visualize the basic layout of the town of Holcomb, where the murders had taken place and where most of the story takes place. Imagery throughout the story makes you feel as if you are there in the story, resulting in a better flowing and understood story. An example of imagery that stood out to me was whenever Capote stated, “Here was a picture of the two together bathing naked in a diamond-watered colorado creek, the brother, a pot-bellied, sun blackened cupid, clutching his sister’s hand and giggling..”. The reason this example of imagery stood out to me was because of how much Perry had changed from being a kid until and adult. When Perry was a kid he loved Barbara and cared for her, whereas once Perry was an adult he physically harmed Barbara and scared her. Corresponding with Perry's actions of harming his sister, the time between them being children and being adults, Perry suffered mental and physical abuse from his father once forced to