Cold Blood by Truman Capote Truman Capote Essay

Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Truman Capote termed In Cold Blood a non-fiction novel, which he wrote to prove that a writer could bring the art of a novel to factual reporting. By adopting such a technique, Capote succeeded in blurring the lines between works of fiction and non-fiction. More important, he succeeded in "...taking the reader deeper and deeper into characters and events," (Shaw, p. 85) and thereby managed to bring to vivid life the horrific nature of the Clutter murders in Holcomb, Kansas. Indeed, perhaps Capote's non-fictional work is a disturbing one precisely because of the fact that it is an exhaustively researched, in depth report of not just the events but also the characters of the victims and their killers. In particular, Capote's portrayal of the two killers, Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene Hickock, as socially dysfunctional personalities capable of cold blooded killing ends up shaking the reader's equanimity by the very notion that such socially detached individuals could, in fact, be part of American society.

America has always been portrayed as an idyllic land of opportunity, founded as it is on principles of democracy and equality. Capote seems to deliberately play on this fact by setting out to sketch the Clutter family as the epitome of that idyllic vision of America. Further, by choosing to begin his narrative on such a note, and then cross-cutting to Smith and Hickock, Capote effectively establishes the contrast between wholesome America and its darker, less acknowledged side. This is evident in the very manner in which Capote introduces the characters of the two killers, using their very appearance to establish the fact that they were socially deviant and dysfunctional: "Their flight is not presented as panicky.Instead, it is more like the dissipation of momentum. They are 'on the road,' reflexively, as they have always been. They experience neither hope nor fear...it is only their fantasies perhaps that give them any appearance of having a will, a plan." (Waldmeir and Waldmeir, p. 140)

It is not just the note that Capote sets to Smith and Hickock's seemingly innocent journey, but also the manner in which he describes their interaction that lends the impression that something is just not right with this whole picture. True, a reader who is not already privy to newspaper reports of the Clutter murders may fail to connect Smith and Hickock to the murder scene. However, for those readers who are already aware of the facts of the case, the very casual air of the two characters begins to lend real meaning to the words "in cold blood." In fact, the cold blooded nature of the crime becomes even more evident when it is established that Smith and Hickock really had no clear motives; at least not of the conventional kind. Indeed, it is this singular fact that is perhaps the most horrific in the entire narrative, made all the more terrible by statements such as Perry's when he recounts his killing….....