In Cold Blood; The Breakthrough

Xanthe Demas

In Cold Blood Book Report

January 10, 2011

AP Language and Composition

The realistic and appealing tale by Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, reflects the tremors and terrors that Capote himself experienced as a result of his own moral and intellectual struggles as a homosexual, and a struggling writer in the mid 1900’s. The book, set in a small town in Kansas attempts to relate the best it can to a real life situation. The Clutter family serves as a perfect vessel for Capote to represent these bizarre and deranged events in the world right to us.

Throughout In Cold Blood, Capote explores the senseless, and seeks an explanation for a terrible event that seems to have none. The book opens with a description of Holcomb Kansas, the small town that the plot of the book surrounds. Holcomb is a small, antique town where everyone knows everyone, and “nothing ever really happens.” The Clutters, a well-known, church going, good-hearted family is found brutally, bizarrely, murdered on November 15^th 1959. The town is baffled, along with the police and investigators considering there were barely and clues or motives to the murders.

However, as the reader you are briefed on both sides of the story. The chapters alternate perspectives between the Clutter family members, such as the daughter Nancy, Mr. Clutter, and the son Keyon. The Clutter family, although successful and popular, was lacking support from a mother. Mrs. Clutter was declared insane, and never really left her own bedroom. After being enthralled by a short clip of the Clutter family, Capote shifts to the perspective of the two murderers, Dick and Perry. Capote also includes perspectives from Nancy Clutters boyfriend, the Chief of Police, and the English Teacher at the local high school. However, the murders are by no means the climax of the book. The murders are the justification for the rest of the book. After the murders took place, In Cold Blood continues to chase Dick and Perry around the country, following them as they plot their gruesome murder of the Clutter family.

Truman Capote’s style of writing forced this bizarre situation into every nook and cranny of your imagination. The descriptions and style of Capote’s writings were a huge breakthrough in author’s styles all over the world. His descriptive, peculiar style of non fiction writing opened the doors for many authors to write in the style that many books today are written in. The altering perspectives of In Cold Blood mirror those of many works of writing that are published today. Capote’s book not only introduced this new contemporary style of writing, but a new subject as well. In, In Cold Blood Capote develops this bizarre, extraordinary story, with such great detail and imagination, that you can’t help but turn the page.

Capote’s overall theme of the struggle, and the eccentric happenings of life is very well represented throughout In Cold Blood. Capote recognizes the hardships of life in all areas, and represents it through the bizarre happenings of the Clutter murder. The colorful descriptions of everything little detail throughout In Cold Blood allowed the writing in the 20^th century to take a huge turn.