The Use Of Language In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Words: 920
Pages: 4

Capote introduces a “lonesome” Holcomb before the horrendous occasion of the Clutter family murder which shocked, not only the inhabitants of the village, but also the rest of the naive nation. Illustrating a vast landscape, Truman Capote describes a remote town of Kansas identical to the wild west. The various uses of language, including diction and syntax, rapidly contrasts a village of monotony, to a place of rising suspicion amongst the residents of Holcomb following the traumatic occurrence of the Clutter killings.
Capote’s language reveals the true emptiness of Holcomb by introducing a bleak atmosphere before the tragic murders of the Clutter family. The use of mellow diction, allows Capote to describe a town dissimilar to one of a loud, rapid, urban lifestyle.
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The variety of language, including diction and syntax, used by Capote to depict this shocking event helped create great distinctions of pre and post Holcomb during the time of the Clutter family murder. Capote is able to use this same stylistic language to describe all of the events throughout the book. The most important passage where Capote’s stylistic language helps bring together the entire book is at the very end, as Capote illustrates the atmosphere, “the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat” (Capote 343). All of the depictions made in the exposition of this novel are brought together to conclude the same “lonesome” Holcomb in western Kansas. The implication of alliteration is evident, as it was once presented when revealing the nightly noises surrounding the horrifying incident. Capote also intelligently contrasts the “wind-bent wheat” to the “high wheat plains” mentioned earlier in the novel, hinting towards a transformation of an uncorrupted village to one crammed with