Comments on “Cold Cuts” from Truman Capote’s novel ‘In Cold Blood’ Essay

Before commenting on the quotations from the novel I have to clarify that ‘In Cold Blood’ is a fiction based on a true story. This means that the book has several documentary elements and others are fictionals. Capote had to use tools of writing a report, and of traditional fiction as well. As a result, sometimes it is diifficult to separate the realistic parts from the nonrealistic ones, even because of knowing the writer’s long investigation about the murder and its background. Telling the custom of hunters might be a true story but the other half of the quotation is fiction, I guess. By the time of writing the novel Mr. Clutter has been dead, so Capote couldn’t quote from him. But there is a need for the sentence given into his mouth, because by this (â€Å"I’m not as poor as I look†) the readre sees his figure as a very kind, nice, generous person. So, after the murder we feel sorry for him, and it’s easier to understand why the villagers were so shocked because of his death. I’m not sure whether this part is ture or only created by Capote but I think it’s main role is to show Dick’s strangeness and insensitiveness. To kill an innocent dog for no reason (I don’t think that there would every be any reason to kill someone†¦ ) is a metaphor of the also innocent Clutter family. I think that this story might be real because after reading the book the readre feels fear from Dick, he is so evil. But on the other hand the writer forms our opinion about the characters in his novel, as wee see them the way Capote describes them. This quotation is so formal, so distanced, that it sounds a report from the news. I think that this is real and the writer’s aim was to make the novel much realistic. This part is real again because it only gives facts about the murderers. With the help of this we read the novel as a true story. It’s well-known from rhetorics that facts are unquestionable, so they are true. This quotations is a good example of mixing realistic and fictional elements, I think. The garden might have been â€Å"white with sea-fog†, but Mrs. Johnson can only recall what did she really think when she closed the door. I think the writer here used the literary tool of projecting a character’s inner feelings onto the environment, or nature. That might also be ture in the case of the second sentence about the murderers who look like in this picture as two escaping animals. Mentioning Perry’s shorter leg is again used to show that the writer felt sorry for him. In this case the type of the car can be true and even the act of stealing but on the other hand it’s not mentioned in this sentence, only the reader knows the next steps. In my opinion only the writer found out the contex of stealing the Chevrolet (so lighting the cigarette) and mentioning only this but not the act itself. In this description it’s more interesting. Showing Perry’s thoughts before being captured is again a mixture of reality and fiction. As Capote met him on the interviews and in the jail, not during the big travel, he could only collect recalled information which is usually a bit different from reality. I’m not sure whether Perry had really thought that, so I think that the writer here projected on Perry what the villagers or the detectives thought, or wanted to believe in. The perspective is retrospective in this sentence whereas the writer puts them in a present situation. This confession-like sentence from Perry might be true bt on the other hand I think again that the write used this to create Perry’s figure likeable, but on the other hand not saying that he is innocent. I think this uotation might be partly true but I’m not sure that this is what Perry exactly said.