"In Cold Blood" 3

"I was always thinking about Dad, hoping he could come take me away, and I remember, like a second ago, the time I saw him again. Standing in the schoolyard. It was like when the ball hits the bat really solid. Di Maggio. Only Dad wouldn't help me. He told me to be good and hugged me and went away. It was not long afterward my mother put me to stay in a Catholic orphanage. The one where the Black Widows were always at me. Hitting me. Because of wetting the bed. Which is one reason I have an aversion to nuns. And God. And religion. but later on I found there are people even more evil. Because after a couple of months, they tossed me out of the orphanage, and she put me some place worse." pg 128

I think this passage is important because it shows the human side of Perry, a small portion of all the charicterization Capote puts into Perry. Even though he is a killer, i guess its easier to sympathize knowing he's had a tough childhood - 3rd grade education, being abandoned, etc. It is also interesting why Capote devoted such a long chapter to describing Perry and his childhood, while mostly igoring Dick, the other killer. Knowing that the book is non-fiction, and that Capote had obsessively researched this story, it may be that he just liked the guy more and wanted to put more of what led Perry to do the things he did into the book, instead of it having any particular importance to the book in comparison to the other characters.

Questions:
Why so much perry charicterization? still no idea on the killing motivation...
Why do they go to mexico, then come back?

"In Cold Blood" 2

"He was getting out of the car to go after them when he heard the screams, but before he could reach the house, the girls were running towards him. His daughter shouted, 'She's dead!' and flung herself into his arms. 'It's true, Daddy! Nancy's dead!'
Susan turned on her. 'No, she isn't. And you don't you say it. Don't you dare. It's only a nosebleed. She has them all the time, terrible nosebleeds, and thatt's all it is.'
'There's too much blood. There's blood on the walls. You didn't really look.'" pg 58

At this point in the book, it becomes evident that the Clutter family has finally been murdered, after a suspenseful scene-to-scene desctription of the Clutters and two men, who are the killers, even though it is not explicitly that there's any connection between them and the Clutters throughout the book. The whole time, i had been thinking, well ok he's describing them moving towards Holcomb, but are they the killers? Why is it relevant? It is also important to note that Capote did not describe or even mention the actual killings at all - he skipped from the family going to bed and the two men pulling up to their house, to the next morning in this passage where Nancy is found dead. I think the purpose of this is to leave the reader to wander what happened, why, and how, and give you alot of room for imagination, enhancing the overall reading experience.

Questions:
Why skip the murder scene?
Why did Perry and Dick (the two guys) murder them? what is the motive?
Why are they already dead and i still have most of the book left to read?

"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. Blog 1.

"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 same time not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them - four shotgun blasts, that, all told, ended six human lives. But afterwards the townspeople, theretofore, sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy recreating them over and over again - those sombre explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many neighbours viewed each other strangely, and as strangers."

Prior to the above passage, Mr Capote had just gotten done explaining the monotonous every-day life of the small, obscure village of Holcomb, suddenly interrupted by a terrible murder. Being at the very beginning of the book, it is the first hook to bring the reader in, telling you what is ultimately going to happen, using imagery ("dry scrape of scuttling tumbleweed", etc). In the following chapter he procedes to describe the main victim and his life story. Why tell from this perspective, and not the killers'? Furthermore, his highly metaphorical description of the impact of the killings' on the village ("sombre explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust" - love it) also serves as part of the hook to drag the reader in. I like Capote's style of writing. I wouldn't normally bother reading a book where the ultimate outcome is already known, but this book is already interesting starting from page 3. It's kind of like Oedipus Rex in some ways, where the whole thing has already happened but the focus is on the how/who/when/what.

Questions:
Why tell the story from the victim's perspective? How does this benefit the buildup of the story?