"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?
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