Truman Capote's In Cold Blood: Novel Analysis

A sizable amount of today’s literary classics were written during the twentieth century, books that have continually stimulated the mind for years or broken new ground in writing. One such publication is To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and written by Harper Lee, and is considered to be one of the best works of literature ever written. It attracted attention and criticism from the moment it was published, and To Kill a Mockingbird continues to be criticized to present day. A book similar to To Kill a Mockingbird in scrutiny and controversy is Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. It has been subjected to a number of evaluations about its themes and messages. In Cold Blood showcases Truman Capote’s views on the disintegration of the traditional American Dream by presenting the needless murder of an ideal American family, and the subsequent capture and execution of the two brutal murderers written

In Cold Blood uses the styles of anti-realism and fiction in its writing to better showcase its elements of realism and nonfiction (Knickerbocker 2). Capote designed a completely new style of writing called the nonfiction novel. It is a book that uses the more emotional aspects of a fiction work and combines it with the facts of a nonfiction work. The result is an entertaining and emotional work of literature. “Not the least of the book’s merits is that it manages a major moral judgement without the author’s appearance once on stage.” (Knickerbocker 2). Another element of the nonfiction novel is the writer’s objectiveness. Since works of nonfiction or nearly always at their core objective, an author writing a nonfiction novel is supposed to be objective, or at least, remain unseen throughout the story. Even though Capote was extensively involved with the actual case, he never appears or is mentioned in the