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Capote's Techniques In Person's Unknown

Capote is very unique in his writing style and this is something we can come to expect in what he describes as the first non-fiction novel ever written. It must be considered when reading In Cold Blood that some items in the book are not the prose of Capote yet actual statements and accounts; they are of course open to manipulation from his own choice of how much and where he shows them to us. There is a fantastic level of imagery in Capote's writing but that is created not via elaborate description but by an honest and simple creation of an ordinary environment.

The first and most prominent technique we see in the novel and this section is Capote's ability to tell the story in a third person narrative but that has been produced by the information given to him in one on one interviews. The reader can be mistaken for believing Capote actually was there immediately in the aftermath of the killing and was with all the characters documenting their movements. This did of course become reality when Capote did make his way into town to begin his research. This section sees each paragraph pack in a large amount of information which is made only possible by the wealth of research conducted by Capote.

There is also first person narrative in A Persons Unknown, Susan Kidwell recounts to us the funeral and the fact it is a person we know had an emotional connection with the Clutter's it creates a more intense recollection. The words spoken are those of a person who was pained by the event and not interesting in writing or glamorising the story. Capote's use of people like Susan allow us to still engage in what essentially to us has become a story yet still realise the horror that it caused. The interviews are presented in such a fashion though that it flows as normal prose and falls very easily from third person narrative to first. The account of Dick and Perry making money through cons is told from the first person narrative of Perry. It seems...

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