1. The Literary Merits of Truman Capote’s Compelling Novel
In Cold Blood

2. Structure (flow)
The way Capote breaks up the story between characters is definitely the best way to accurately convey the message and still provide suspense and evoke emotion.
He tells each person’s story and what they did leading up to, through, and after the tragic moment of the murder of the ill-fated Clutter family.
Capote tells us of the murderers preparations for the “score” needing to be settled. He says how Perry had wanted to go and get stockings to put over their faces in case of witnesses. However, Dick reminds him that there will be no survivors.
On the eve of the unfortunate event, the Clutters were having a normal night. The daughter of the family, Nancy, had even had her boyfriend, bobby, over for dinner. He eventually became the first suspect in the following trials, for he was one of the last to see them alive.

3. Style
Capote also uses a certain style that makes you feel urgency, fright, and in some cases, insanity.
. “A car horn honked. At last—Dick.”
Capote also tells how Perry Smith, the second of the two killers, didn’t feel anything during and after the shooting due to the fact that he hadn’t known the unfortunate family.

4. Tone and Word Choice
Capote uses tone quite effectively in this novel. He uses it to describe the Clutters as an ideal family.
However, he portrays the murderers as a classic pair of villains.
He describes Mr. Clutter as a man “of but average height, standing just under five feet ten, Mr. Clutter cut a man’s-man figure.”
However he describes Dick Hickock, one of the murderers, as “…a flimsy dingy-blond youth of medium height, fleshless and perhaps sunken-chested…”

5. The Murderers and the Murdered

6. The End