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In Cold Blood
Mental illness is a motif In Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Capote paints a chilling picture of the killers, particularly Perry. The way Capote describes him makes it seem possible that Perry was a...
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In Cold Blood
Once Perry and Dick are convicted of the Clutter family murders, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood proceeds to describe their lives in prison and on death row. The pre-death row prison details mostly...
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In Cold Blood
It would seem that author Truman Capote's opinion of Dick Hickock is that Dick is crude, unrefined and utterly amoral. He says early in the book, Of course, Dick was very literal-minded, very—he...
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In Cold Blood
Through depicting Perry as a lonely and remorseful, Capote shows compassion for him and makes him sympathetic to the reader. Capote constructs an internal life for both Perry and Dick, but Dick’s...
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In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood was Truman Capote's attempt to create a new genre (the nonfiction novel) in which the drama comes not from the events of the plot, which are known in advance, but in how those events...
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In Cold Blood
When he begins his investigation of the Clutter murders, Dewey forms two main theories about what happened. One is that only one killer was involved – somebody with a grudge against the Clutters....
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In Cold Blood
In the book In Cold Blood, author Truman Capote chronicles the brutal murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas in the 1960s. The accused murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, are convicted...
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In Cold Blood
First, it's important to realize that there is danger in inserting "Capote's opinion on the death penalty" just because this is a novel. In pretty much ANY other case, I would suggest that you...
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In Cold Blood
Capote's developing relationship with the murderers in his nonfiction masterpiece is almost as intriguing as his writing style. In Cold Blood begins objectively enough. Capote evinces sympathy for...
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In Cold Blood
Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is a riveting journey through the gruesome yet true tale of the murder of the Clutter family in Kansas. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock had both been recently paroled...
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In Cold Blood
Truman Capote was one of the innovators of "new journalism." Others included Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson. New journalism is more subjective and impressionistic than traditional journalism,...
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In Cold Blood
Although possessing the literary structure and techniques of a novel, In Cold Blood is actually a nonfiction work by Truman Capote published in 1966. It describes the murders of Herbert "Herb"...
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In Cold Blood
While their murder of the Clutter family is of course inexcusable, both Dick and Perry had suffered unfortunate and crippling injuries which, if not excusing their actions, do provide some form of...
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In Cold Blood
Although the phrase "the American Dream" had a longer history, it was made popular by the writer James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book Epic of America. Originally part of the myth of the American...
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In Cold Blood
In the first section, "The Last to See them Alive," there is a passage in which Perry is waiting for Dick at a Kansas cafe called the Little Jewel. Capote writes from Perry's point of view, "Still...
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In Cold Blood
Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, tells the true story of two murderers named Perry Smith and Richard Eugene "Dick" Hickock. In 1959, Hicock and Perry murdered four members of one family in Kansas: a...
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In Cold Blood
There are a few similarities between Truman Capote and Perry Smith. They were both children of divorced parents. Capote spoke with an odd, childlike voice. Smith was said to still suck his thumb...
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In Cold Blood
Capote portrays their idea of "nature vs. nurture" in Dick and Perry. Capote shows sympathy for one of the men, based on his upbringing, and shows the other to be a "natural born killer." Capote...
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In Cold Blood
Frederic Johnson (note the correct spelling of the first name) is the brother-in-law of Perry Smith, one of the two men convicted of murdering four members of the Clutter family. His wife, Barbara,...
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In Cold Blood
Capote spends a great deal of time discussing the way in which Dick Hickock and Perry Smith live when imprisoned. They had been paroled from prison when they committed the Clutter murders, so...
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In Cold Blood
Truman Capote claimed that he had created a new literary genre with In Cold Blood. He called it a nonfiction novel. To make his book more dramatic, he employed imaginative description and imaginary...
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In Cold Blood
Capote's journalistic novel chronicles the robbery attempt by Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, a plan that Hickock devised while incarcerated. While in a Kansas prison Hickock had...
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In Cold Blood
In Truman Capote's jounalistic novel "In Cold Blood" the Clutter family--particularly the farmer, Herb Clutter--is victimized by Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene Hickock, two ex-cons who...
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In Cold Blood
Dick questions whether there isn’t something actually wrong with Perry. He bases this on his observation of Perry’s strange ways from the days when they were prison cellmates, when Perry would suck...
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In Cold Blood
Capote details the abuse and contempt experienced by the killer Perry Smith from a very young age. Because of this attention to the killer's background, which parallels the author's sensitive...
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In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood is of course a true story. Perry and Dick in the story formed the design of robbing the Clutter family and further planned to leave no survivors. They spent some time planning the...
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In Cold Blood
For the reader of the twenty-first century, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is probably not as spine-chilling as it was in 1965 when it was first published. For, then, serial killers were unheard of...
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In Cold Blood
In his efforts to present the narrative of In Cold Blood in a journalistic style that recreates the setting and the persons involved, apparently without bias, Truman Capote uses an omniscient...
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In Cold Blood
One way to approach the issue of rationalizing or justifying the imposition of capital punishment in the specific case of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock is to cite the comments made by County...
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In Cold Blood
When Dick Hickock arrived in Las Vegas with Perry Smith (in Part Three of In Cold Blood), Dick planned to impersonate an Air Force officer. Capote writes that "It was a project that had long...
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In Cold Blood
Historiography is the study of the historical process - historical methods, biases, authorship, etc. Metafiction is also sometimes referred to as illusory fiction, fiction that may not be fiction,...
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In Cold Blood
Nancy was concerned about her father because he seemed to be in a perpetual bad mood. During her conversation with Susan on the phone, Nancy mentioned that her father did not seem like his regular...
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In Cold Blood
The murders were committed by two ex-convicts out on parole, Perry Smith and Edward Hickcock. Hickock had heard from a fellow prisoner, who had once worked for the Clutters, that there was a safe...
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In Cold Blood
The most dynamic character is Dick. He is the one with ideas; he is the one who makes things happen. Arguably the central event of the Clutter murders is really down to him, even if it’s Perry who...
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In Cold Blood
Perry keeps a variety of items with him in large boxes held together with string. A lot of them are journals, letters, drawings, cards and other memorabilia. He has letters from his sister...
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In Cold Blood
With his new genre of journalistic fiction, Truman Capote presents facts through the vortex of the personal histories of the victims and criminals, especially Perry Edward Smith, about whom Capote...
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In Cold Blood
Sympathy is probably the wrong word, as I don't know that Truman Capote actually felt sorry for Perry Smith, but he did empathize with him. That is, both personally and in his writing, he could...
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In Cold Blood
One of the main themes in Capote's book is the issue of nature vs. nurture. For example, did the killers become this way because of the environment in which they were raised, or is there some...
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In Cold Blood
As they make their escape to Mexico, Dick and Perry stop at stores where Dick can really "con a guy." For one, the clerk in a Kansas City, Missouri, clothing store was especially gullible because...
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In Cold Blood
They intended to kill him and take his car. Mr. Bell was a meat-packing company executive from Omaha, Neb., who picked up the two killers when they were hitchhiking. Just as Perry was about to...
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In Cold Blood
Poor Bobby Rupp. Mr. Ewalt went to his family farm and first spoke with Bobby's father. Then, the two of them went into the bunkhouse, apparently where the boys' rooms were since the Rupp home is...
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In Cold Blood
Truman Capote employs two different narrative styles in the book: third person omniscient and first person. The majority of the book is in third person omniscient, which means that the reader knows...
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In Cold Blood
The decidedly unreligious Perry Smith is depicted as singing the popular religious song, ‘In the Garden’ on the night when he is to commit a shocking multiple murder. Capote has his reasons for...
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In Cold Blood
Willie-Jay is one of Perry's few friends in In Cold Blood and he is the only one of those friends who attempts to change Perry's attitude and to save him from future violence. Willie-Jay is honest...
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In Cold Blood
In Truman Capote's jounalistic novel, In Cold Blood, he reports on the horrific crime of the murder of the Clutter family while examining closely the men who committed this crime. Capote...
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In Cold Blood
In craftingIn Cold Blood, Capote employs many tools of the novelist, shaping his non-fiction work almost as if it were a novel. Foreshadowing is used effectively and repeatedly throughout the book....
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In Cold Blood
There is a repeated emphasis on dreams in this novel. There are actual dreams and then "dream" can be seen as goal or aspiration as well. Perry has the dream of travel, going to Mexico, and...
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In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is a narrative history about the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. In the first part, "The Last to See them Alive," Capote describes the...
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In Cold Blood
The horrific crime takes place in a small town where people like the Clutters don't even lock their doors at night. This was a common activity especially during the early part of the 20th century....
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In Cold Blood
You could certainly use this quote to prove that Hickock deserved at least the same penalty as Perry but not because of his desire to rape the Clutter girl. Because he premeditated his crime,...
