Truman Capote’s novel, In Cold Blood, is a story about two murderers who killed four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Based on a true event, Truman Capote focuses not on the victims murdered, but instead on the relationship between the two killers. After reading the passage “Mountain Hawks”, one will find that Capote’s style of writing is more memorable than the incident that actually happened. Although Capote’s writing contains a lot of factual information, his technique in which he writes the book is captivating. Capote is able to captivate his audience by using various stylistic devices, such as tone, syntax, irony, and imagery. Another imperative technique used by Capote is perspective. These techniques, although similar in both passages, vividly show the distinctions between the two main characters, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, by being used for different purposes. Including two accounts of the same time span, one from Dick’s point of view and one from Perry’s, shows how each character differs when recalling and interpreting the same situation.
Writing In Cold Blood as a documentary allows Capote to specifically address the actions, thoughts, and feelings of each individual character, particularly Dick and Perry. Including two representations of the same time span allows the reader to see both Dick’s outlook on the murders and Perry’s outlook. The first passage contains detailed descriptions that exemplify Dick as an impenitent person who doesn’t think twice about committing murder. Whilst the second passage is a disturbing narrative that shows Perry as a thin-skinned human being who questions the killings of the Clutter family. These different perspectives demonstrate the partiality Capote displayed towards Perry as a killer, but not of Dick.