In Cold Blood, part 1

1. Discuss the author’s depiction of small-town life, including the physical description of the town and its environment and the descriptions of the townspeople. Don’t feel you have to cover everything in a single post! It’s better just to pick one example and present it in some detail. Be sure to consider the question of TONE (see Glossary), in other words, the author’s attitude toward the subject and the word choices that get that attitude across to us. Use examples and give page numbers, please.

The look Capote gives us of Holcomb is very Mayberry... a picturesque 50s town, where everybody knows everybody else, everybody is friendly (except the postmistress), and people like Nancy Clutter are "the town darling" (7). The idea of a place like Holcomb is that "the inhabitants of the village, numbering two hundred and seventy, were... quite content to exist inside ordinary life - to work, to hunt, to watch television, to attend school socials, choir practice, meetings of the 4-H club" (5). What we learn as the murders unfold though is that every town has it's secrets, and even the most serene place has something else bubbling under the surface just waiting to be found.

We are told that the killings "stimulated the mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers" (5). We see before the killings that the ideas which do not fit into small town life are simply swept under the rug. Bonnie Clutter for example, is simply never talked about. "Mrs. Kidwell accepted the absence of the hostess without comment, and assumed, as was the custom, that she was either 'indisposed' or 'away in Wichita'" (29). After the murders, we start to see through the cracks... Mrs. Clare and her disdain for many of the townspeople, John Sr. and John Jr., the townspeople's dislike for the Clutters neighbors, and many of them having the nerve to say so. People stopped sleeping, starting locking their doors. Something like this doesn't happen if there aren't cracks in the facade to begin with, so by showing this, I think Capote is expressing a bit of a cynical tone - nothing is ever as beautiful and perfect as we try to make it look from the outside. Sometimes, there just needs to be an event that pulls away the mask.

2. For the most part, the chapters alternate back-and-forth between showing readers what’s happening in the town and what’s happening with the killers. What’s the effect of this technique on readers? Why do you think the author chose to tell the story this way? Examples will be needed to illustrate what you say here.

I love Capote's splicing of the story lines throughout the first section of the novel. By alternating between the lives of the Clutters and the lives of the killers, we get a real time feel to all that is happening. As the Clutters are living their lives, the killers are simultaneously plotting their death, and if the story lines had been separated by chapters at a time, it would be impossible to get the feeling of this all happening at the same time.

It helps draw the reader into the story more, helps build more and more sympathy for the Clutter family, keeps the emotion high as we are eager to find out what will happen next in both parts of the story. With more separation, the reader may forget details of what happened with the other characters, or worse yet, may lose interest in the other characters. By constantly cutting and pasting the next section of each story chronologically, overlapping the stories, one cannot lose interest in any of the nuances.

Aside from the introductory segment, the only segment in the first part of the book to stray from the normal alterations happens on page 110. The previous segment is Dick and Perry driving through Mexico, rambling about how they may get caught, and how there must be something wrong with them. The section that follows is Perry's internal thoughts about the conversation, and his history with Dick, and him witnessing the killing of the dog. Not immediately cutting back to the happenings in Holcomb shows a separation between Dick and Perry. The alteration has been a back and forth between the "bad guys" and the "good guys" and now, right after a "bad guy" section, we are given this segment about Perry. It causes him to stand out as different from Dick, someone to be considered in another way, perhaps.

3. Discuss the incident with the dog in Mexico. What is its role here?

For me, the incident with the dog in Mexico is eerie. It shows the reader just how unstable Dick is and how much in denial he is. He is clearly unnerved by Perry's talk of them getting caught, about there being something wrong with them. We are told, "Perry, with his sharp and scratchy intuitions, had hit upon Dick's one abiding doubt." (109) and he tells Perry angrily to "just shut up" and pushes the car faster (110).

Dick believes that there is nothing wrong with him, that he's "a normal", and looks at Perry as somehow different, somehow deranged because he could kill a man. Yet it is Dick who feels so little regard for life, and gets such a thrill from the prospect of death, that he runs over dogs in the street "whenever the opportunity arose" (113). At least this act, he won't be caught and persecuted for, because the authorities don't come after someone for "accidentally" running over a stray dog.

This magnifies the level of dislike the reader already feels toward Dick however. It shows him to be someone truly evil on a number of levels. The fact that "Dick was satisfied" after hitting the old dog shows his love of killing and leaves the average reader hoping even more that his fears are founded and that he will be caught.