The Malleability of Nonfiction in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood - Essay Example

The Malleability of Nonfiction in Truman Capotes In Cold Blood In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote’s is a true master piece. Truman demonstrates great writing skills and detective knowledge when he investigates and follows keenly a murder of involving the whole of the Clutter family. After seeing a story about it in the news, Clutter decided to make an investigation book into the matter while using actual events and constructed possibilities in regard to killer’s natures and characters.

Truman’s work is what is referred to as “New Journalism” based on what it exhibits to the readers (Capote 23). Truman approaches new journalism in a unique way, one which had never been used before to construct the events that led to the murder, describe the murder and come up with prediction of the future prosecutions (Capote 33). In order to achieve this great piece of work, Truman takes a leading role in going to the ground to investigate the cases himself and files reports in regard to what could have conspired for the murder to occur.

In the book, Truman captures the event from another perspective and narrates to it to the audience as if he was an investigator reporting what could have conspired. It is this nature of the plot that the book became a journalistic time ( Capote 53). It is upto the point when he combined real events to fictitious prosecutions and predictions that the book became categorized depicting “new journalism” style. The thematic elements of investigations contribute heavily towards the plot of the story as he tries to find evidence linking to the murders and even narrates situations that would have occurred in case of trials of the murderers.

Capote tries to act as an omniscient person in the story through predicting how Dr. Jones could have said plus tries to enter his head and see how he would have spoken. Such writings are what is typically evidenced as being part of new journalism. Works CitedCapote, Truman. In Cold Blood. New York: Transaction Publishers, 1975.