In this passage, Capote utilizes asyndeton to achieve his purpose of elaborating Dick’s character, developed by describing Dick’s familial relationship. For instance, the syntax of this excerpt is the succession of two sentence fragments, said by Mrs. Hickock to Mr. Nye, that offers two reasons why Dick might not have written any mail to Mrs. Hickock. The lack of a conjunction to connect the two fragments that both start with “of” demonstrates the explicit repetition of similar ideas, emphasizing that Dick is truly ashamed of how he hurt his family, according to Mrs. Hickock. In Standard English, distinct words, phrases, or clauses forming a list are typically joined together by conjunctions; that Mrs. Hickock’s list of two reasons lacks the