Through the use of a carefully chosen epigraph, organization, non-authoritative presence, embellishment, research into the character's past and pathos, Truman Capote is able to tell the story of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith in great detail, even presenting his argument against capital punishment in his masterpiece In Cold Blood. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Before the book begins, Capote sets the tone with a line from Francois Villon's "Ballade des pendus," which he composed while on death row in 1463. Capote kept the piece in the original French, but when translated it reads “My brother men who live after us, / do not have your hearts hardened against us. / For if you have mercy on us poor people, / God will soon show you mercy." This poem very subtly foreshadows Capote's intentions to write the book about the murderers and their point of view, as well as attempting to make the reader feel pity for them. The poem also references religion, which plays a very important role in the story with the Clutters and especially with Perry. Villon's backstory also has a surprising amount of similarities to Dick and Perry's crime spree; he killed a priest, stole from a safe right before a gang crime spree, then was arrested for affray and sentenced to death. Interestingly, his sentence was changed to a 10-year exile from Paris. Capote uses this epigraph to give readers an idea of ​​what to expect without revealing any details about what happens. It's an appropriate reference because both Villon and the Clutter Killers committed somewhat similar crimes but had two very different outcomes. Organization is a very important aspect of In Cold Blood. The first part focuses on Dick and Perry's future victims, the Clutter family, but the second part skips the murders and chronicles the events that followed. The details of how the murders occurred will be explored later in the book. Like everything in Capote's finely crafted masterpiece, this was intentional and done for a specific reason. Smith and Hickock's journey after their "game" is described before the gruesome details of the murder. This allows Capote to flesh out Dick and Perry as human beings without the reader's opinion being tainted by knowledge of their appalling actions. It also establishes the Clutters as the embodiment of the American dream and provides details about the family that will give the reader a better understanding of events later in the book. In Cold Blood is considered the beginning of a new genre, creative nonfiction. By combining real events with his literary technique, Capote has control over how the reader perceives events and characters, which he uses to his advantage to portray Dick and Perry as complex human beings rather than simple criminals. Each element of the narrative was chosen to be included by Capote based on their effectiveness in convincing the reader to agree with him, but this is done without an authoritative stance. For example, he mentions the doctor crying while Andrews' "heart continued to beat for nineteen minutes" (383). Faint indications of the inhumanity of the death penalty are scattered throughout, but Capote does not explicitly state his personal opinion on the subject and presents the information so that the reader can come to their own conclusions. This lack of a commanding presence makes Capote's ethics have a fair outside perspective, as does his not shying away from the details of Dick and Perry's terrible actions tomaintain his impartial opinion and admit that they were far from innocent. His lack of presence is especially notable with “the reporter, who knew Smith just as well as Hickock” (386). It is easy for this detail to go unnoticed, but in reality the journalist is Capote himself, who is collecting thousands of pages of notes that he prepared for the book. They are not mentioned in the book, but the way he takes notes and the time spent interviewing inmates certainly confirms his ethos as an extremely knowledgeable source. Creative nonfiction can create controversy over the validity of the events it presents, and In Cold Blood is no exception. Many witnesses to the hanging say that Capote's account of Perry's apology was embellished for dramatic effect. Choosing to exaggerate Perry's last words would match the sensitive man Capote portrayed Perry as at the beginning of the book. However, someone who says “I didn't mean to hurt that man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Spoken softly. I thought so until the moment I slit his throat” (281) when it comes to a murder he committed they don’t seem to have much remorse. If Capote actually embellished Perry's apology, it would be to show that no matter what horrible things someone does, there is still some humanity in them and perhaps rehabilitation would be better than the death penalty. It may be surprising that family is a central theme of a book about the brutal murders of an innocent family, but its significance is clear once the characters' backstories are established. In addition to the Clutter family obviously playing an important role, both Dick and Perry's families since their childhood have received a lot of attention. Dick's parents are a lot like the Clutters; both were simple farmers who treated their children well, the main difference between the families being the considerable wealth gap. Perry, on the other hand, had a terrible childhood, which appealed greatly to pathos. His parents had a complicated separation, his siblings committed suicide, his education ended after third grade, and he was treated horribly by nearly every adult throughout his childhood, leaving him without a role model. The nuns beat him for wetting the bed, and Perry describes what a Salvation Army children's shelter worker did to him: “He filled a tub with ice water, put me in it, and kept me there until I turned blue. Almost drowned” (152). His tragic upbringing could certainly force readers to be a little more empathetic to him and understand his mental instability. Dick's background makes the reader wonder how he ended up in the same position as someone with a difficult past like Perry's, but Capote points out that Dick was never punished for his misdeeds as a child. While one case was much more extreme than the other, the way they were raised affected Dick and Perry's psyches. Dick and Perry's case was the subject of controversy and Capote shows that it could be seen as very unfair to the defendants. Although this ultimately did not affect the outcome of the trial, Capote highlighted Dick's effort to argue the inadequacy of their defense. Among those who thought the trial was unfair was Dick's father, who said: “The judge up there! I have never seen a man so prejudiced. There's no point in having a trial. Not with him in charge” (324). Capote not only questions the morality of the death penalty, but in the process addresses questionable aspects of the trial. More than anything, Capote examines the M'Naghten rule, described as "fairly colorblind to any gradation between white and.