Comments on "Cold Cuts" from Truman Capote's novel 'In Cold Blood'

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Comments on „Cold Cuts” from Truman Capote’s novel ’In Cold Blood’

        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.

1) 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 („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.

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2) 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 ...

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