Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Summer Reading Response #1
Truman Capote’s *In Cold Blood* is not an easy book to read. It deals methodically with a horrendous act that seems an inescapable aspect of human nature: murder; and it deals with this act in a highly literary and descriptive fashion- providing the reader with extensive background information and details related to both the victims and the perpetrators. However, it is for these very reasons that *In Cold Blood* is considered an American classic and is highly esteemed as a literary work, even though it is one of the few nonfiction pieces to fall into this category.
Going back through the first half of the novel, choose a passage between five and fifteen lines long, that you feel truly captures Capote’s unique style as a writer, and explain how this passage embodies his skill and what is its deeper connection to what you’ve read of the novel thus far. You will be scored based on your insight, thoughtfulness, and effort. (Please see my example and graduates' examples in the comments below.) HERE’S THE CATCH: You must NOT choose the same passage- even part of the same passage- as already appears in another’s response, nor should you regurgitate someone else’s analysis. Read through all other responses carefully before completing your own so as not to repeat.
(Total Points: 30 of 100 for entire Summer Reading Assignment)
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The beauty and sophistication of Capote’s writing exists not only in what he puts to paper, but as much with what he leaves unspoken. Later in the passage beginning, “The Black Chevrolet was again parked…,” on page 45 of my copy of In Cold Blood, Capote writes of one of the two killers, Perry:
ReplyDelete“But what, he wondered when the anguish had subsided, had he really expected from a reunion with Willie Jay? Freedom had separated them; as free men, they had nothing in common, were opposites, who could never have formed a “team”- certainly not one capable of embarking on the skin-diving south-of-the-border adventures he and Dick had plotted. Nevertheless, if he had not missed Willie-Jay, if they could have been together for even an hour, Perry was quite convinced- just ‘knew’- that he would not now be loitering outside a hospital waiting for Dick to emerge with a pair of black stockings.”
Capote’s writing style merges beautiful, poignant phrases (“Freedom had separated them…”) with the choppy, conversational tone we can imagine Perry speaking with (“Perry was quite convinced- just ‘knew’…”) so deftly that we begin to forget where the author’s thoughts begin and where Perry’s end. Perry recognizes the ridiculousness of his situation- that he is stuck waiting for his partner to get a pair of stockings from a nun- but what Capote leaves unmentioned is the very point he seeks to make most dramatically. If Perry had met up with Willie-Jay, no, he would not be waiting for “Dick to emerge with a pair of black stockings,” but more importantly, he would not be awaiting his execution, rightfully, for the savage murder of an innocent family.
Capote’s writing style can be compared, symbolically, to a coin: two sides, so very close together, but yet so very different from one another; but, when the coin is flipped, it is impossible to make heads or tails of which side is which. On one hand, there is the pleasantness of the Clutter family and Holcomb; on the other hand exists the dark and sinister ambitions of Dick and Perry. The “flip of the coin” is the murder of the Clutter family. Take this excerpt about Dick, beginning on page 73, as an example:
ReplyDelete“A few miles north, in the pleasant kitchen of a modest farmhouse, Dick was consuming a Sunday dinner. The others at the table – his mother, his father, his younger brother – were not conscious of anything uncommon in his manner. He had arrived home at noon, kissed his mother, readily replied to questions his father put concerning his supposed overnight trip to Fort Scott, and sat down to eat, seeming quite his ordinary self. When the meal was over, the three male members of the family settled in the parlor to watch a televised basketball game. The broadcast had only begun when the father was startled to hear Dick snoring; as he remarked to the younger boy, he never thought he’d live to see the day when Dick would rather sleep than watch basketball. But, of course, he did not understand how very tired Dick was, did not know that his dozing son had, among other things, driven over eight hundred miles in the past twenty-four hours.”
Here, Dick is seen as a normal person – eating dinner with his family, watching basketball with his brother and father, and then falling asleep. Yet, about eleven pages earlier, the aftermath of his (and Perry’s) devious deed – the slaughtering of the Clutter family – is described in nauseating detail. On the other hand, the citizens of Holcomb began as a quiet, peaceful group; after the discovery of the bodies of the Clutters, and the lack of evidence pointing to one distinct individual, the residents of the quiet Kansas town began to slowly turn on one another, becoming increasingly suspicious of people they had known for years.
Capote flawlessly demonstrates his ability to portray, equally, both sides of his metaphorical coin – as a coin has a 50-50 chance of landing on heads or tails when it is flipped.
Capote has such a simple way of explaining the victims but when it comes to the killers he uses a lot of complicated language, or rather a different form of structure. It seems like that’s the way the people see the characters. It’s easy to see the victims as good people, as almost flawless characters so it's easy to understand them. He uses simple language to describe them but enough "pretty" language (big "beautiful" words you could say) to make them seem as somehow amazing. But when he describes the killers, Capote changes his style, I think. He explains a lot when it comes to Dick and Perry somehow trying to make us understand, not defending them, but making us understand why they did what they did. He makes them human. I think this is something that I haven’t seen in any other authors writing. In my case I think he understands each character, but at the same time unbiased.
ReplyDelete”He was here, and embarked on the present errand, not because he wished to be but because fate had arranged the matter; he could prove it - though he had no intention of doing so, at least within Dick's hearing, for the proof would involve his confessing the true and secret motive behind his return to Kansas, a piece of parole violation he had decided upon for a reason quite unrelated to Dick's "score" or Dick's summoning letter. The reason was that several weeks earlier he had learned that on Thursday, November 12, another of his former cellmates was being released from Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing, and "more than anything in the world," he desired a reunion with this man, his "real and only friend," the "brilliant" Willie-Jay.”(pg 27)
Capote uses a different structure when it comes to the killers and gives the bad guys this human side to them that most of us wouldn’t even look at as soon as we attached the word murder to their name. I had to read the first sentence a couple of time to understand it, and yes it seems easy once you’ve read it a couple of times, but at the beginning it doesn’t even look as if he finished the first part of his sentence. He has this way of just being all over the place at first. And the other part was that at this point of the book we know what Perry is going to do and while we’re making assumptions in our heads, Capote throws us off by giving Perry a reason for doing what he was going to do. Like I said before, he’s not defending Perry but rather giving us the chance to decide what to do with this character. I think that even though it might not be noticeable, Capote’s style lets us interact a lot with the story.
My excerpt is:
ReplyDelete"Sitting, he had seemed a more than normal sized man, a powerful man, with the shoulders, the arms, the thick, crouching torso of a weight lifter- weight lifting was, in fact, his hobby. But some sections of him were not in porportion to others. His tiny feet, encased in short black boots with shiny buckles, would have neatly fitted into a delicate ladies dancing slippers; when he stood up he was no taller than a twelve year old child, and suddenly looked, strutting on stunted legs that seemed grotesquely inadequate to the grown up bulk they supported, not like a well-built truck driver but like a retireed jockey, overblown and muscle-bound." Page 15
This is Capotes description regarding Perry's physical appearance. It's a god example of Capotes style because, although Perry was one of the killers, he doesn't describe him with negative details so much, like how most writers would reflexively do. I, myself, were I so inclined to write a novel such as this, would have incriminated the villains and built up sympathy towards the victims to make it more emotionally moving and tragic. By the way that Capote seems to consider all the different aspects, it reminds me of how the story would have looked like through gods perspective because all humans are gods creations and he wouldn't view one of his humans negatively, if you put stock in the fact that god supposedly loves everybody equally.
This description reminds me a little of frankenstein although admittedly more flattering; how Perry is so diproportionate with small feet and stature but with heavy bulk. Capote then goes on to describe how he could manipulate his features into different expression, which features he acquired from his cherokee mother and Irish father and his hobbies; playing the guitar, singing. He mentions his aspirations from childhood to go deep sea diving and have adventure. All these tidbits added to the sense that Perry was just a regular guy off the street and not a cold blooded killer. He even points out Perry's vanity, a flaw, which only adds to his facade as a normal guy- "Every time you see a mirror, you go into a trance, like. Like you was looking at some gorgeous peice of butt. I mean, my God, don't you ever get tired?"(Page 15) When you consider this outlook on Perry combined with the 'god' point of view, you can almost pity the downfall of Perry. God would say, "My poor creation, how he's gone astray!"
Because Capote chooses to establish his villain-characters in this way, it makes the murder seem more like a miunderstanding or a mistake, giving pity to the killers.
I don't think its so much as unbiased as it is that Capote likes all his characters, he enjoys both victim and villain. And when Capote ends that small segment with "A car horn honked. At last-Dick." (Page 17) It makes the majority of his perusal of Perry seem like a day-dream that you just got snapped out of. Who in their right mind would day-dream about a killer unless they held some favor toward them? Oh yeah. Perhaps god but ultimately Truman Capote.
The excerpt I decided to pick was this:
ReplyDelete" ... Well, I took one look at Mr. Clutter, and it was hard to look again. I knew plain shooting couldn't account for that much blood. And I wasn't wrong. He'd been shot, all right, the same as Kenyon-with the gun held right in front of his face. But probably he was dead before he was shot. Or, anyway, dying. Because his throat had been cut, too. He was wearing striped pajamas-nothing else. His mouth was taped; the tape had been wound plumb around his head. His ankles were tied together, but not his hands-or, rather, he'd managed, God knows how, maybe in rage or pain, to break the cord binding his hands. He was sprawled in front of the furnace. ... " ( Last paragraph on page 64 that continues onto 65 ).
I find this passage captures the fact that Capote went through the process of thinking, and in his head with Herb Clutter as a character, that the man would try to fight back to the best of his ability. It was interesting that it was described by Larry Hendricks, someone who was more familiar with Nancy and Kenyon, rather than Mr. Clutter himself. It was clear that Larry was shocked about the outcome, and surprised he had enough strength in him to be able to break the bindings restraining his arms.
It was also made clear just how much blood was more than likely in the direction of the body, based on Larry's inability and decision not to look back in that direction. The way Larry reacted was most definitely the way someone would upon walking into a crime scene with a body in the same condition. He depicted how humans actually react in a shocking situation. You don't see Larry as an English teacher in this instance. You see him as a human being reacting to another human being's demise - one who hasn't, as far as he knew and was concerned, done anything wrong to anyone by any means.
An innocent man's blood had been spilled, in such a small town where they all know each other.
Capote wanted to invoke the fear of someone's death happening to anyone, not just in the people of Holcomb, but in the readers as well.
Using the descriptive details, Capote was able to strike fear, sympathy and shock into the readers all at once, in such a short passage. It's just one of those factors that I find makes him as unique an author as he is seen.
By the way, I read the book online on a pdf is that alright? Here’s the link anyways: http://enovel4free.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/in-cold-blood-truman-capote.pdf
ReplyDelete"Because he hates me," said Perry, whose voice was both gentle and prim - a voice that, though soft, manufactured each word exactly, ejected it like a smoke ring
issuing from a parson's mouth. "So does your mother. I could see - the ineffable way they looked at me." Dick shrugged." Nothing to do with you. As such. It's just they don't
like me seeing anybody from The Walls." (pg. 15 on the pdf)
This passage had some interesting word choices. When i read the word ‘gentle’ i wondered why Capote would use that sort of word for someone who murdered a family. Then i had to remind myself that, Perry is still a human being who cares. He knows that Dick’s parents look at him differently because he doesnt come from where they come from. It shows that Capote wants you to sympathize with Perry and to get in the feeling of how someones parents would look down upon you for being from somewhere else. Capote wants us to not look at Perry as such a bad person if he still cares about how other people think of him. Although the way he adds “manufactured each word exactly” it would seem that Perry has been thinking this for a long time and didnt know any other way to say it besides being straight up about it. i think the way he said it was weird or frowned upon for him because the way its described as “ejected it like a smoke ring issuing from a parson's mouth” which sounds like its not the norm for a ‘parson’.
"...we sat around like any other night- Nancy and I on the couch, and Mr. Clutter in his chair, that stuffed rocker. He wasn't watching television so much as he was reading a book- a'Rover Boy,' one of Kenyon's books. Once he went out to the kitchen and came back with two apples; he offered one to me, but i didn't want it, so he ate both. He had very white teeth; he said apples were why. Nancy-Nancy was wearing socks and soft slippers, blue jeans, I think a green sweater; she was wearing a gold wristwatch and an I.D. bracelet I gave her last January for her sixteenth birthday- with her name on one side and mine on the other-..." (pg 51 top of page)
ReplyDeleteThroughout the entire book Truman Capote does a incredible job of helping us relate to the characters by creating everyday simple scenes like the one portrayed above. Almost all of us have watched tv at night with our family, watched our father eat apples while sitting in his chair. These simple details are what makes Capote's writing so easy to visualize and relate to. It allows to question "what if that had been my family?" or "How did such a simple, normal life turn so horrible so quickly?". His unjudgemental tone towards the two killers also makes it easier to identify with them dispite there actions throughout the book. What makes Capote's writing so powerful is how his book is like a mirror that allows us not only to watch the story being shown but to reflect upon our own lives and actions. In the case of killers the authors refusal to satirize is the most powerful. The rest of the characters all hold a part of us all, which gives us important things to think about.
I completely agree. Capote used such amazing elements like realism to keep the readers intriged in such amazing ways. It seems like a simple thing to do to jut retell a story but the novel could have easily become a satire story about murder and human nature like Oliver Stone's film "Natural Born Killers". Capote took realism as a character of the novel few films have accomplish this like All the president's men, Argo , and Dog Day Afternoon that's why they have become loved classics. Capote has thought us to reflect in our actions and allow us to see our selves in the characters and asks us what is the differences between us and them? What can occur that can stop this from happening in your neighborhood, in your house, to your family? What stopping us from doing that to a family? Without altering the story, that's brilliant writing.
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ReplyDelete"Went through the kitchen and saw a lady's purse lying on the floor, and the phone where wires had been cut... and when we started up the stairs, going to Nancy's room, I noticed he kept his hand on it, ready to draw. ‘Well, it was pretty bad. That wonderful girl- but you would never have known her. She'd been shot in the back of the head with a shotgun held maybe two inches away. She was lying on her side, facing the wall, and the wall was covered with blood. The bedcovers were drawn up to her shoulder. Sheriff Robinson, he pulled them back, and we saw that she was wearing a bathrobe, pajamas, socks, and slippers-like, whenever it happened, she hadn't gone to bed yet. Her hands were tied behind her, and her ankles were roped together with the kind of cord you see on Venetian blinds’.”
ReplyDeleteIn this part of the book Capote describes the murder scene with very deep details. With these types of details one can determine that who ever did this was evil and the act was inhumane. But when one continues to read throughout the book Capote's description of Dick and Perry he is not biased and describes them as if they did not commit the murder.In a way I think the reason he does this is so that the person reading the book does not automatically take the side of the Clutters but also takes the time to analyze the lives of the people who murdered them and what in their lives may have led to them committing the crime. Then review it once again and determine whether if something were done differently in while growing up this heinous crime would not be apart of either or both of their lives.
Pg.36
ReplyDelete"Later, while she was awaiting the return of the mulberry pickers, she heard the sound of weeping, heartbroken, heartbreaking.- As a kind of ghost Wilma." (sorry I can't write it out, I'm on a road trip and using a phone.)
This passage is one that may go unnoticed as the usual leading story of a drama but it's not. With detail of the surrounding he explains how it feels to be a victim of yourself caught in depression and a victim of life because many things are out of your hand. In a cool way he makes Bonnie a child again in this passage while she's suffering the consequences of her adult past that of course a child wouldn't have. In this way he depicts the depression which excuses Bonnie for her past and not being the "strong woman" that was typically needed when her husband was gone and she had to make decisions. Not in this passage but before he mentioned that Bonnie had been married a few time before, and this passage is about Bonnie reflecting on how her son will remember her. This is another connection to the child like aspect because if you've ever been a victim of sour marriages as a child you know that sometimes the outcomes are deadly and the relations your expected to keep can be suffocating. Usually it the father who is seen as and but my mom has depression and can be very similar to Bonnie's character and they match in their worry in being a good mother even though the situation may not be their fault. This is Bonnie's struggle to try to keep a relationship she may feel she doesn't deserve maybe because she doesn't feel she is motherly enough to deserve to be a mother, for mother know how to keep a family together. Then it closes by leading into the potential depression that Kenyon may have as I have experienced as a child it seems out of place to try to keep a relationship between someone who is that close like s parent when they are the ones being distant it's a feeling of someone who is alive has already died. I think she feels that she has already become a ghost but doesn't know how to express it. Nothing to do with it but its also said that ghost leave cold spots explaining her coldness, shes been living not in love but memory but it was hot in the room because shes really not a ghost. (just taking it to the extreme lol)
Capote's style of writing is different than other authors. When reading about a crime scene, the perspective of the story is usually from the ones who are killed and not by the actual killers. Capote goes back and forth, from the Clutters to Perry and Dick. Some of the descriptions about Perry and dick make them seem just like any other person. For example in this exert: "Dick was driving a black 1949 Chevrolet sedan. As Perry got in, he checked the back seat to see if his guitar was safely there; the previous night, after playing for a party of Dick's friends, he had forgotten and left it in the car. It was an old Gibson guitar, sandpapered and waxed to a honey-yellow finish. Another sort of instrument lay beside it - a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun, brand-new, blue-barreled, and with a sportsman's scene of pheasants in flight etched along the stock. A flashlight, a fishing knife, a pair of leather gloves, and a hunting vest fully packed with shells contributed further atmosphere to this curious still life." (page 17), Perry seems like a regular guy who plays a guitar. Capote describing both sides of the story with great detail, minimizes the sympathy towards the Clutter's death. Throughout the beginning we are told how the Clutter's will be doing their tasks for the last time, alerting us they will be murdered. However, this exert also demonstrates how opposite Dick and Perry are. Perry seems like the "nice" guy while Dick seems like the "Bad" guy. Even though Perry has been in jail before, he is the more educated one.
ReplyDeleteCapote has an amazing writing style that fuses creative structure with the ability to convey important informative detail in such a way that manages to capture a reader's attention even when he is addressing details that would normally be seen as boring. Take this excerpt for example: "The grim information, announced from church pulpits, distributed over telephone wires, publicized by Garden City's radio station, KIUL ("A tragedy, unbelievable and shocking beyond words, struck four members of the Herb Clutter family late Saturday night or early today. Death, brutal and without apparent motive..."), produced in the average recipient a reaction nearer that of Mother Truitt than that of Mrs. Clare: amazement, shading into dismay; a shallow horror sensation that cold springs of personal fear swiftly deepened."
ReplyDeleteIn this excerpt, Capote is only writing about a radio station reporting the murder of the Clutter family, something that is not overly interesting. However, Capote chooses words and constructs them in such a way that pulls the reader in and plays with their emotions in a way that keeps them captivated. This writing style is what gives such life to his novel and makes it an incredible piece of literature.
When I was starting to read the book, the first couple of pages were very hard for me to understand. Truman Capote kept creating a new scene in which I later got the pattern that he would describe the people in Holcomb, and what the "killers" would be doing meanwhile. I really like how he marked this division because he left you thinking of what you just read and how you had to connect that to what you were going to read afterwards. His way of writing is like a puzzle, the puzzle that Dewey had to put together and see as a whole, what had happened on November 15, 1959?
ReplyDelete<> (Bottom of page 83 continues to 84.)
I think this is one of the passages that captures Capote's unique writing style because you can never stop reading the passage and notice where he is narrating and where something is being read or spoken through the characters. His tone and writing just flows, it is coherent and you are just sucked into his description. Dewey uses the few clues he has to group the puzzle together, in this case Nancy's diary, but he always seems to end up in the same place, he turns and hits the wall at the end of the alley. But he will later find new pieces that were not hiding in Holcomb.
Sorry it didn't come out, this is my passage...
ReplyDeleteAmong the other articles on Dewey's desk was Nancy Clutter's diary. He glanced through it, no more than that, and now he settled down to an earnest reading of the day-by-day entries, which began on her thirteenth birthday and ended some two months short of her seventeenth; the unsensational confidings of an intelligent child who adored animals, who liked to read, cook, sew, dance, ride horseback-a popular, pretty, virginal girl who thought it "fun to flirt" but was "nevertheless" only really and truly in love with Bobby." Dewey read the final entry first. it consisted of three lines written an hour or two before she died: "Jolene K. came over and I showed her how to make a cherry pie. Practiced with Roxie. Bobby here and we watched TV. Left at eleven."
Page 16 "Forgive me, dear. I'm sure you'll never know what it is to be tired. I'm sure you'll always be happy..."
ReplyDeleteJolene was silent. The note of panic in Mrs. Clutter's voice had caused her to
have a shift of feeling; Jolene was confused, and wished that her mother, who had
promised to call back for her at eleven, would come. Presently, more calmly, Mrs. Clutter asked, "Do you like miniature things? Tiny things?" and invited Jolene into the dining room to inspect the shelves of a whatnot on which were arranged assorted Lilliputian gewgaws - scissors, thimbles, crystal flower baskets, toy figurines, forks and knives. "I've had some of these since I was a child.
Daddy and Mama - all of us - spent part of most years in California. By the ocean. And there was a shop that sold such precious little things. These cups." A set of doll-house teacups, anchored to a diminutive tray, trembled in the palm of her hand. "Daddy gave them to me; I had a lovely childhood."
I think that this and other passages from In Cold Blood shows Capote's skill in his ability to get us to know the characters in the book. From what we have been given in the book we know that Mrs. Clutter is a person who hasn't been able to realize herself in life. She is a happy woman in good days but she is kept from being her "good old self" from her mental issues and long stays in her house. She is very anti social and is the kind of person who has simple pleasures like the "little things" mentioned above. We see parts of her personality come through in the passage above when she apologizes to Jolene for saying she would grow tired. In that moment Mrs. Clutter must have been thinking out loud and not so much of Jolene but of herself. Mrs. Clutters room is mentioned to be very simplistic to the point that it seemed like nobody lived there. It seemed that this was only the result of her nature but Capote shows us that it is to some limited extent when Mrs. Clutter regrets having her son remember her as some ghost. Capote's style of writing differs in the way that he reveals the characters to us. He doesn't give us the whole person inn one description but goes along the text revealing certain aspects both implicit and explicitly. Capote also shows his skills in the way he describes individuals who could be considered opposites as a loving couple like the Clutters and the partnership of Dick and Perry.
The excerpt I chose from the book is:"Perry produced his harmonica (his since yesterday, when he stole it from a Barstow variety store) and played the opening bars of what had come to be their
Delete"marching music"; the song was one of Perry's favorites, and he had taught Dick all five
stanzas. In step, and side by side, they swung along the highway, singing, "Mine eyes
have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the
grapes of wrath are stored." Through the silence of the desert, their hard, young voices
rang: "Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!"
I feel this excerpt best captures Capote's ironic writing style, which is used especially in reference to Perry. In this part of the story, two cold blooded murderers are on the side of the road waiting to club a driver and steal their car. As they await their victim, Perry begins to play a hymn about God coming to earth,smiting the wicked,and destroying evil. Perry, on more than one occasion, has alluded he has a belief in God and eternal punishment for sin. Perry knows what he has done and what he plans to do is wrong ,and yet he has committed theft, murder, and is now contemplating murder again without remorse or second thought. In this passage, Capote has given us a glimpse into the complex mind of an emotionally tormented character in this story
Sorry it tarty Mrs. Madden I was working at a summer camp yesterday earning my community service hours for school
"Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few American - in fact, few
ReplyDeleteKansans - had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on
the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in
the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there. The inhabitants of the intrieged and lead them
village, numbering two hundred and seventy, were satisfied that this should be so, quite
content to exist inside ordinary life - to work, to hunt, to watch television, to attend
school socials, choir practice, meetings of the 4-H Club. But then, in the earliest hours
of that morning in November, a Sunday morning, certain foreign sounds impinged on
the normal nightly Holcomb noises - on the keening hysteria of coyotes, the dry scrape
of scuttling tumbleweed, the racing, receding wail of locomotive whistles. At the time
not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them - four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six
human lives. But afterward the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each
other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy recreating them over and
again - those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which
many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers."
Capote is on of the rare gems in American Literature, one of the few who can retell a true story and still keep us the readers in the edge of our seats, even tho we know what will happen in the end because is history, it already happened, yet why are we so pulled in into the story! Willaim Goldman, Carl Bernstein, Bob woodward, and Alan J. Pakula accomplished this with the film and Novel "All the Presidents Men"; Ben Affleck, Chris Terrio and Tony Mendez accomplished this with the Film "Argo"; and finally Sidney Lumet, Frank Pierson, P.F. Kluge, Thomas Moore and Leslie Waller accomplished it with the Al Pacino classic "Dog Day Afternoon". All those brilliant films were bade on true events, yet even tho we knew how it would end the audience was still at the edge of their seat. Capote accomplished this with such class and style, the novel In Cold Bool could have easily become a satire of Violence murder and the human mind like Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" but no Capote took the more challenging and unique way. When I read the passage I've posted I was beyond hook it was brilliantly written and shockingly powerful, it was like a bucket of cold water to read that passage after reading the less exciting first passages that became before it. Capote kept the readers intrigued and took the readers trhu a wave of emotions and a guilt and sympathy written trip. Capote was the inspiration to the films that I have listed above and did it better than all of them, Capote is truly an american artist and one of the finest writers of all time.
But most of those who telephoned were responsible citizens wanting to be helpful ("I wonder if you've interviewed Nancy's friend, Sue Kidwell? I was talking to the child, and she said something that struck me. She said the last time she ever spoke to Nancy, Nancy told her Mr. Clutter was in a real bad mood. Had been the past three weeks. That she thought he was very worried about something, so worried he'd taken to smoking cigarettes..."). Either that or the callers were people officially concerned - law officers and sheriffs from other parts of the state ("This may be something, may not, but a bartender here says he over heard two fellows discussing the case in terms made it sound like they had a lot to do with it..."). And while none of these conversations had as yet done more than make extra work for the investigators, it was always possible that the next one might be, as Dewey put it, "the break that brings down the curtain."
ReplyDeleteOn answering the present call, Dewey immediately heard "I want to confess."
He said, "To whom am I speaking, please?"
The caller, a man, repeated his original assertion, and added, "I did it. I killed them all."
"Yes," said Dewey. "Now, if I could have your name and address..."
"Oh, no, you don't," said the man, his voice thick with inebriated indignation. "I'm not going to tell you anything. Not till I get the reward. You send the reward, then I'll tell you who I am. That's final."
Dewey went back to bed. "No, honey," he said. "Nothing important. Just another drunk."
Capote's writing style gave me more of a distinctly detailed and almost humorous style to it because in my head I can imagine this very well taking place in someone's house, and I can imagine a drunk or several of them calling frequently through the night demanding this irrational scenario to play out in their favor. His writing is believable and real and is so in depth in detail that it becomes a clear image in my mind.
Capote's style of writing is different, and unique from other author's because even though this is a non-fiction text he goes out of his way to make it like a story, giving all of the characters such as the Clutter family, Dick, Perry and other minor characters a personality and even giving the book a beginning, middle, and end by splitting it into three parts. Other non-fiction texts I have read usually "tell it how it is" by saying exactly how the events went down and ending with an inspirational legacy the family left behind. By formatting the book like a fictional story we come to care and sympathize for everybody including the murderers because like fictional characters created by an author, Capote offers an in depth look at their personalities and pasts making it easier to understand why Perry and Dick did what they did. Despite this, Capote doesn't seem to think it excuses what Perry and Dick did as the title is called "In Cold Blood" making it very realistic on a very humane and moral level.
ReplyDeleteI chose this passage because the format the dialogue it's in is similar to fictional texts because it uses the word 'said' in between dialogue and because we see into what Perry was thinking before he slit Mr. Clutters and how he felt the slightest bit of regret for doing it, something we don't always expect from a murderer who can do something as cold as that.
Passage (pg. 302):
"I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft- spoken. I thought so up to the moment I cut his throat." While talking to Donald Cullivan, Smith said,"They [the Clutters] never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it's just that the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it."
"But Dick had made up his mind: stockings of any shade were unnecessary, an encumbrance, a useless expense ("I've already invested enough money in this operation"), and, after all, anyone they encountered would not live to bear witness. "No witnesses, " he reminded Perry, for what seemed to Perry the millionth time. It rankled in him, the way Dick mouthed those two words, as though they solved every problem; it was stupid not to admit that there might be a witness they hadn't seen. "The ineffable happens, things do take a turn, " he said. But Dick, smiling boastfully, boyishly, did not agree: "Get the bubbles out of your blood. Nothing can go wrong. " No. Because the plan was Dick's, and from first footfall to final silence, flawlessly devised."(Pg 24 in pdf)
ReplyDeleteCapote's writing style is insightful. He describes Dick's and Perry's personalities and mentality clearly and profoundly. Although its a non-fiction book Capote depicts Dick and Perry as if it were his own characters with such a great level of detail. I think he does this in order for us to understand their behaviors and motives of why they committed murder. Capote show us how Dick and Perry differ a lot from each other, Dick is describe as the perfect plan executor and cold hearted because he doesn't want to live any witnesses and try to rape Nancy. While Perry is more as the cautious one who thinks that something can go wrong. As later in the book Perry is found to have a mental instability which makes us understand as why he never really try to stop Dick. Capote's writing style make us submerge deep into the story and makes us feel sympathy towards the killers.
"(Perry was "ashamed" to take off his trousers, "ashamed" to were swimming trunks, for he was afraid that the sight of his injured legs would "disgust people", and so, despite his underwater reveries, all the talk about skin-diving, he hadn't once gone into the water)" (34% through the book. I have a Kindle, so I don't know what page number this is on.)
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read, Capote seems to expand on the idea that Dick and Perry are two normal people with just enjoying themselves. If you don't pay attention to Capote's writing style, you wouldn't even think of them as horrible murderers (until you get to the descriptive, gruesome killing scene). Capote's style of writing is very ironic, but not just for plot, but for how the whole story was written. Usually, writers tend to delve into the victim's mind, however Capote went into the murderers' minds. Also, in Dick's and Perry's mind, they are the exact opposite of what a killer would think (Well, besides Dick, a little). I chose this passage is to show how Perry seems like a guy just having a good time, even with his shyness. Capote makes us question why did these guys even go through with this.