Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Reading response: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

As intrigued as I have always been with such incidents (murders), and more so intrigued about the people who committed them, the beginning of this read captures several things. It captures the simplicity of a quaint Kansas town streamlined with the descriptions of what any rural town would look and feel like in the 1950's.
Mr. Clutter, a fine man, described by his friend Andy Erhart, earned all that he acquired and accomplished through hard work; working his way up in every facet of his life proudly with conscious concerted effort. He earned the respect of many, in which his family too were notable and respected as well.
The two culprits who committed this heinous crime Capote seems to describe in a humanistic kind of way. Just like two buddies of on a road trip of some sort, never mind their agenda or thought processes; wantonly culpable of such an act.
Capote engages the family's demise in such a descriptive way where I as the reader, not having been born when this occurred, but feeling as though I am too connected emotionally to this tragedy. I'm thinking of their very last moments of panic and fear. The thought of a man not being able to save himself or his family from their vicious demise. Two murderers who just as the title of the book describes, took these innocent lives without a bat of an eye.
The description of the twenty post mortem pics of the family on the desk of Mr. Dewey was the crux of what Capote thirsted for. He wanted to know and dig in the gore of the matter, possibly just as others who have tried to understand the who, what, and when to put the pieces of the puzzle together. What in fact made the murder of this particular family sensationalized? What in fact drove Capote to want to actively capture the events of the Clutter murders as all of the controversy was unfolding? And why in fact did Capote think that this would be the very thing that would intrigue the masses? Indeed, a book about murder.
With his strange and weird looking self.