Cold and Detached

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood begins with a detached and gloomy description of the isolated town of Holocomb, Kansas. He describes it as a town "out there" and "simply an aimless congregation of buildings divided in the center" (pg. 3.), as he makes the reader suspicious of what could happen in the cold novel. While you read the first few pages, describing the town, the town appears as lonely or unsociable but calm and unperturbed. Capote briefly juxtaposes the remote and peaceful town he shows with the sudden announcement of the murder of six people. As I read the first fifteen pages or so, I could see that the author is building up suspense for what is going to happen, a homicide, as the reader familiarizes with the town and the characters.

Once the calm and empty illustration of the town is disrupted, Capote shifts right away to the characterization of Herbert Clutter, a respected member of the community of Holocomb. The author continues to use a detached tone but with a foreboding aspect. As a reader, you expect that the murder will happen any moment. I got suspicious about him when Capote describes his anger and thought that the armed hunters would lead somehow to the killing, because the cold and suspensive tone. While the tone is like that for the most part, the author occasionally uses quotations where he shows Holocomb's "prairie twang" or their colloquial language. The Clutter parents see one of their daughters as a "real Southern belle" (pg. 8) and Nancy, that daughter, wanted to go to a special event that all her friends were going to. The author's specific description with a personal touch contrasts from the distant introduction of the town. Capote makes it seem first like just a typical environment where life is dull, but as he starts to get into the Clutter family, the reader gets the feeling that they're good, normal people, perhaps, like you (the reader) are. The way the author gets increasingly into detail with the characters can suggest it will follow the structure of many crime novels or TV episodes, or that these follow Capote's structure, as he gets into the homicide. I remember that Agatha Christie's And The There Were None started with a detached mood, a kept a cold tone all through the book, and used a similar structure as Capote. She began with a character, describing him or her in general, and then she got into specifics of their life, culminating in their disappearance. Looking at the next couple of pages of In Cold Blood, I can see that Capote will alternate stories between characters, just like Christie.
So far, reading this book feels like reading a murder novel but with a deeper literary aspect to it. I've just read the first fifteen pages so honestly I haven't been able to analyze it very deeply, so that's a question I want to keep in mind in my future reading: Where is Capote going with the crime stories?

Vocabulary

·      Haphazard: lacking organization

·      Dire: extremely serious or urgent, dangerous

·      Gaunt: skinny, looking exhausted

·      Rawhide: leather

·      Postmistress: woman in charge of a post office

·      Meager: lacking quantity or quality, thin

·      Chancy: subject to unpredictable changes

·      Scuttling: hurrying

·      Impinge: have a negative effect, intrude

·      Keening: making a wailing sound in grief

·      Seldom: rarely

·      Hued: colored (hue: shade of a color)