Week 4- literary non-fiction

[ikschultz]

Literary non-fiction is a term that means a genre of writing uses literary styles to express facts in a way that appeals to the intended audience. In a normal crime reporting, the author would have no bias and have a very objective tone to relay information to the reader. However, In Cold Blood, Capote takes on a subjective tone in some areas such as describing the killers and their backgrounds. Capote tries to turn the reader to sympathize with the killers through giving a story of how they grew up and using that as an excuse as to why they did such an awful thing. Also in a crime report, there would be no other details of the lives of the killers only the facts of the murders and evidence they had dug up. No dialogue would occur. I believe Capote created this kind of story to report an important story to a wide audience and express its importance without boring his readers. The impact on the audience was that the reader becomes intrigued to this story of crime while still getting the whole truth. By writing it as a literary non-fiction, the readers know this is a true story yet they read it as if it were a story made up in Capotes mind.

[michaeldaly]

I agree with Izzy. I think its extremely important to Capote to somehow incorporate the killers upbringings. He doesn't want Americans to look at Perry and Dick and see cold blooded murderers. He wants them to sympathize with them and see how they were victims of being brought up in a harsh environment. The use of this new genre makes the story more interesting and not sound boring like most factual reports are. Instead of writing an open and shut case about a family that was murdered he creates this gray area that confuses, frustrates, and intrigues the reader.  

[16sellersn]

I agree with Micheal and Izzy both and believe that it is important that Capote writes this way because he show us readers the views of every part of the murder. I like this type of story because it brings out many emotions and makes the reader feel for both victim and murderer. This is the one of the books that I actually wanted to read for school. Why can't we have more interesting books like this one??

[ellievancuren]

I think it is interesting when Izzy says that Capote wrote this book in order to tell the story without boring his readers. I agree with that because why else would he write it so it read like a fiction novel? But I think that one downfall to this style of writing is that readers treat the story as if it was fake. At some points in the book we forget that this actually happened and I think that this is somewhat desensitizing to the situation. I feel that, although most everyone who reads this novel knows that it actually occurred, we treat the victims and the killers as characters rather than real people. I feel that although Capote has been effective in his account of the event so far, sometimes it seems that the account if more for entertaining purposes rather than informing the readers about this tragedy.

[lesliemelendez]

I agree with izzy about the fact that he incorporated sympathy for the killers and their backgrounds helped create this type if writing because before then in most murder books all sympathy was directed towards the victims and most if the time it still is but he focused on trying to almost justify their actions on their horrible upbringings which gives the audience another p.o.v. in the story.

[Kamryn Balson]

I agree with Noah about writing the story from the both point of views allows readers to have more insight on the crime and understanding of the crime. By giving both perspectives readers will feel sympathy for the family and for the killers as the author intends. Writing the story as a "literary nonfiction" creates an interesting perspective, and gives the author the opportunity to write about an actual event but it also allows many viewpoints to gain more of an understanding.