In Cold Blood Setting Analysis Essay Example

While In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is a work of nonfiction, it still epitomizes the Southern Gothic genre because it features violence, freakishness, and a small town setting Capote uses these features to criticize society. Capote is trying to show the significance of violence and how the novel wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for an act of violence. Capote explains, “The fine lawn surrounding the Clutter house was also newly green, and trespassers upon it, women anxious to have a closer look at the uninhabited home, crept across the grass and peered through the windows as though hopeful but fearful of discerning, in the gloom beyond the pleasant flower-print curtains, grim apparitions'' (Capote 270). The women in this quote are very eager to look at the past and what has happened to the Clutter family. The “flower-print curtains’ are a threshold between violence and sanity. Capote criticizes society by showing that humans are secretly interested in gore and violence. They just hide the truth. He reveals inner darkness and fascination with the macabre or grotesque. Capote also criticizes society using the idea of freakishness. This is shown through Perry’s dream, “She woke me up. She had a flashlight, and she hit me with it. Hit me and hit me. And when the flashlight broke, she went on hitting me in the dark, that the parrot appeared, arrived while he slept, a bird “taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower,” a warrior-angel who blinded the nuns with its beak, fed upon their eyes, slaughtered them as they “pleaded for mercy,” then so gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him way to “paradise” (Capote 93) Perry’s dream reveals a lot about who he truly is inside himself. His experience with nuns allowed him to unlock a monster inside of him. In this case, it is the parrot who’s the monster. The parrot represents freakishness and out of control violence. Capote is trying to say that if one is traumatized from a traumatic experience, then the traumatized individual will grow up to be something that should never have existed. Capote also uses a small town setting in his book to criticize society and how this town used to be great. Capote remarks, “The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek Temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them. Holcomb, too, can be seen from great distances. Not that there is much to see--simply an aimless congregation of buildings divided in the center by the main-line tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad” (Capote 1).