Timeliness

Harlacher 1

Kristel Harlacher

Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

August 1, 2007

Timeliness

    In Cold Blood is a great example of novel that will last through the generations.  The book has the same effect on everyone.  To my surprise, my Sunday School had read this book too so we discussed the effect it has on the actual reader and it was the same.  Different parts of the book affect the memory of the actual event, but as we were comparing what really stuck in our minds we found that it was the same part.  Ms. Ringo, my Sunday School teacher, read the book over twenty years ago.  That shows that no matter what generation you are from the book will always be a classic that will catch your attention.

   Capote was very talented in rewriting the whole tragic event, that you feel like you were really there watching everything fall into place.   Since this book is non-fiction, I believe that it was a lot easier for Capote to reach the level of creating his book to have that timeless feature.  If he was creating a fiction novel, I think it would have just been like other suspenseful books.  Not real.  The fact that this actually happened and that it was one of the most grotesque murders of its time, help keep the book alive.

One of the Ten Commandments in the Bible states that “Thou shalt not murder”.  Another reason that this novel is timeless is the fact that it deals with a murder story.  No matter what time period a person has lived in, murder has always been looked down upon.  If the case is big enough, people are always going to make a big deal about it.  A murder story is always going to shock the reader, especially if is a horrible one. 

The Town of Holcomb….

Harlacher 1 

Kristel Harlacher

Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

7/31/07

The Town of Holcomb

“The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there”….The local accent is barbed with a praire twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes…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..(page 13)”

     As I read the first page of this novel, Capote described the town of Holcomb. With his description all I could think about was a small, western town that you would see in any old western movie. Repeatedly throughout the text Capote pushes in your mind the fact that the town was in the middle of nowhere….a lonely town. What defines an ordinary town? In my opinion, I would not consider Holcomb very ordinary. For one thing, grotesque murders do not happen in so-called ordinary towns. Without the thought of the murders, Holcomb had many normal, ordinary features. Though the features of this town do not compare to other towns, it had its own school, two filling stations, post office, depot, the Hartman’s Café, and a community of mostly one-story framed homes.

     Although, when I first read some of Capote’s descriptions of Holcomb, all I could think about was little western towns. But as the story went on, I compared the town to Beaufort, a town in Carteret County. The reason I compared it to Beaufort, because as I have walked through Beaufort’s waterfront, all I can imagine is what it must have been like in the past. The past when people would go to the local café to find out the latest gossip instead of talking on the phone, texting, emailing, or scanning the web. I know that in the town of Holcomb, everyone knew everything about each other. I also feel that the old Emerald Isle (before the bridge was made to connect it to the mainland), was very similar to Holcomb. A lonely town, in the middle of nowhere where no one locks their doors.

 ”Holcomb, like all the rest of Kansas, is ‘dry (page 14).’”   “Those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers (page 15).”

     Capote obviously was tyring to depict and explain that Holcomb was a community  where nothing bad ever happened.  That no trouble was ever caused by the citizens and the worst that was predicted would ever happen was that someone would be late coming home or their car got stuck in a mud puddle.  You feel the vibe of innocence from this town as you read.  Capote was trying to make you feel, when you found out about the murders, sympathy not only for the family but for the whole town.  He spent a lot of time and writing, trying to trigger this feeling and I believe he succeeded.  Although I have seen many episodes of CSI, I am still shocked to realize and think that this happened in such a small town.  Since no one ever expected it and it really could have happen to anyone, the town now holds a horrible tradegy in their past.

Works Cited

Picture:

     Picture #5. Visit # 1. <http://www.confluence.org/photo.php?visitid=3686&pic=ALL>.

The Effects on Others in the Community

Harlacher 1 

Kristel Harlacher

Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

August 29, 2007

The Effects on Others in the Community
(this blog is in response to http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/apr/03/high_school_sweetheart/ )

   While reading this article, everything I read in the novel truly became a reality. It never actually hit me that this was a non-fiction story, that everything really happened to the Clutter family.  Rupp’s interview of the murders really made me realize that not only did these murders effect the immediate family but also the whole community.

“He doesn’t understand why people around town started giving him strange looks. Why even some of his best friends turned on him.”
     This quote taken from the article showed that obviously the community was effected.  The only crime Rupp committed was loving Nancy, but since there was no one else to blame, friends suspected him.  I feel great sorrow for Rupp, because not only did he have to battle the fact that his girlfriend and best friend was dead but he had to defend his name that he didn’t commit the crimes.  You would think that in a town, where everyone knows everything about one another, he would be treated with a little bit more respect.  At the end of the section, “Boyfriend and Suspect”, I was glad to find out that eventually his life went back to normal. 

   One question that I really wanted to know was if he ever managed to get over his first love, Nancy.  According to the article, Rupp says that  “time and faith have healed even this, the deepest of scars”.  Since I have never been through an experience like Rupp has, I can’t say that I would be able to get over it.  I’m glad that he was able to work through it and overcome all feelings of loss of the family.  I think that if this incident would have occured closer to his age now, 61, it would have been easier for him to recover.  In my opinion, serious life changing events that happen in the teenage years of your life, will cause you to go into a longer depression than at a different time. 

     I thought it was really interesting that he refused to read Capote’s novel.  I thought it showed real respect for the Clutter family and their unfornate deaths.  On Capote’s part, it seems that he meddled a little bit too much into the communities lives.  Too much that it caused friends and family to become uncomfortable with him and grow to dislike him altogether.  Although I enjoyed reading the book and learning about a grotesque crime that is part of my country’s history, never did I think that writing it would be inappropriate.  I think the storyline and writing the novel would have actually been more appropriate if someone from the community wrote it rather than Capote, a complete outsider to the town.