I want to look at the plot summary and key points / themes, this will help me to gain a better understanding and come up with more informed designs.
'The chilling true crime 'non-fiction novel' that made Truman Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative published in Penguin Modern Classics.
Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human.'
Amazon:
(https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0141182571?_encoding=UTF8&isInIframe=0&n=266239&ref_=dp_proddesc_0&s=books&showDetailProductDesc=1#product-description_feature_div)
Book Summary:
- True story
- Murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in November 1959
- Written like a novel - "New Journalism" - but it is nonfiction
- Deemed masterwork of the genre
- Originally published in four parts in The New Yorker and then released as a novel in 1965.
- Took 6 years to research and write - took toll on Capote, never published another book, In Cold Blood said to be his undoing.
- No apparent motive for killing by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
- Family bound and shot to death, with only small items missing from the home.
- Capote read about the crime in The New York Times and before the killers were caught began doing extensive research with the help of his friend Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Perry and Dick initially got away with the murder leaving barely any clues and having no personal connection with the murdered family.
- Capote explores the motive - eventually concluding that any real motives lay with Perry - his feelings of inadequacy, his ambiguous sexuality, and his anger at the world and at his family because of his bad childhood.
- Dick plays the role of true outlaw - the impact of the killings weighs heavily on him and his role in the murders remains unexplained and unclear.
- Townspeople of Holcomb and other friends of the Clutters are deeply affected by the murders. Including Nancy's best friend, Sue, and Nancy's boyfriend, Bobby.
- Perceived as the "least likely" in the world to be murdered.
- The townspeople unable to conceive the killers were strangers, many became suspicious of everyone and anxious about their own safety with their neighbours.
- Al Dewey his heads the investigation becomes obsessed with both the murderes and the Clutter family - driving force in life.
- Anxiety in Holcomb grows - killers move on with their lives.
- Perry and Dick go to Mexico and back - seems they might not ever be brought to justice.
- A living witness who can tie the two men to the Clutters, footprints at the crime scene, and the possession of a pair of binoculars and a radio from the Clutter home become the pair's undoing.
- Arrested and both confess
- Tried and convicted for murder - after many years on death row, both men are hanged.
- While on death row, Perry slowly reveals his personal thoughts, his ambitions, and the motives that contributed to his life choices, including the night he and Dick entered the Clutter home.
(https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/i/in-cold-blood/book-summary)
I began making a mind map mainly focusing on the characters involved, this then allowed me to highlight certain things that I could potentially work with in the design.
Things that stick out to me:
- November
- 1959
- Eyewitness accounts
- Bloodthirsty
- Idyllic country life
- "four shot gun blasts that, all told, ended six lives"
- Echoing
- The murders, themselves, are not detailed
- Goal of narration - clear and direct illustration of events
- Holcomb impact - fear, paranoia
- Perry's dream
- Footprints - diamond shaped shoe pattern
- Radio and binoculars taken
- Positioning of bodies
- Tension
- Anxiety
- Obsession
- Intimate nature of crime
- Unravelling
- Humanity
- Sale of Babe, Nancy's horse
- "deep underwater"
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