Style and Rhetorical Elements, Part Three

“The light was dimming, the road was straight, with neither house nor human being in view–nothing but land winter-stripped and as somber as a sheet iron.” (Capote, Page 174)

I love this quote. Just read it, and how do you feel? You feel the tension in the air and you know that something ominous is coming. I see a grey, gloomy road in the middle of nowhere, and I get the overall feeling that everyone’s just waiting for something to happen. It makes me feel nervous, anxious, fearful, and sad.

The author put this sentence in to show the mood he’s trying to create. Perry’s thinking this in the backseat of Mr. Bell’s car, right before he’s supposed to hit him over the head with a rock. You can tell that he doesn’t want to do it, and since this is from his perspective, he sees the waiting as an empty road, halfway between two places. He can’t stand just sitting there, waiting to kill Mr. Bell, so he looks around and throws his feelings of sorrow and fear onto the world around him.

Rhetorical devises like this are a great way to show what characters are feeling. After all, I’m sure if this was from Dick’s viewpoint, it would be more of a triumphant, boastful mood than a solemn, gloomy one. The use of mood or tone in a novel can make the readers see things from the characters’ perspective, getting us more invested and interested in them.

 “Perry said, ‘You could be wrong. And if you are, it means The Corner,’ … Dick said, ‘The comedian. You kill me.’” (Capote, Page 188)

Well if this isn’t foreshadowing, I don’t know what is. Perry tells Dick what awaits them if they don’t lay low and be careful. These two characters have always had contradicting traits, which is why I didn’t think a successful partnership between them could last very long. Perry is smart and cautions, and he doesn’t underestimate the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Dick, on the other hand, thinks he’s so clever and skilled that there’s no way that the police could possibly tie them to the murder. Perry’s cautions, wary personality comes off as nagging to Dick, and Dick’s carefree attitude brushes Perry as reckless and unwise. Perry said early on that they should distance themselves as far from Kansas as possible, and Dick is sure that they’re safe, and keeps wanting to go back. But Dick is the one who tends to make the decisions for them. He has a way of manipulating Perry into doing what he thinks they should. Dick makes the decisions, and look what happens: they get caught.

This use of foreshadowing makes us wonder what might have happened if Perry made the pair’s decisions. They might have evaded the police for a longer time, or even escaped them completely. They would have fled the country at the first opportunity, and it would have been much harder for the police to track them down. For that matter, they would have worn disguises, and probably wouldn’t have harmed the Clutter family.

This rhetorical devise stood out to me because it enforces our liking for Perry, because we see that, compared to Dick, he’s a smarter criminal. We also feel bad for him, because it was the relaxed nature of his partner that got them both caught.

“Dick was sick of him… Suspicious, self-righteous, spiteful, he was like a wife that must be got rid of.” (Capote, Pages 214-215)

This is a great use of alliteration. This form of rhetorical devise makes the audience pay closer attention to the writing and to the characters. It’s so easy to hear Dick saying this, based on the character. But the constant use of esses makes him sound like a snake, devising a plan to quickly and quietly dispose of this “suspicious, self-righteous, spiteful” man.

There’s also a simile in there. I love the way Capote compares Perry to a nagging wife, because it shows what I was talking about earlier, how their unique personalities tend to clash. Perry is the more cautious of the two, so it would make sense that Dick, the more carefree, laid back one, would see his warnings as annoying and unnecessary. Likewise, we hear Perry say that he should leave Dick several times.

This conflict of opinions keeps the audience engaged in Dick and Perry’s relationship. Because despite their different ideas and personalities, they stay together. They need each other. Perry and Dick’s unique relationship is what allows a story about two vicious murderers on the run to be interesting and full of layers. And rhetorical devises like these are used to (among other things) show their truly unique relationship.