Dos+Santos

Please break your essay up into the following component parts, highlighting the various parts of each paragraph as follows:

Thesis: dark blue Topic sentence: red Opinion/analysis: light blue Supporting detail:purple Commentary: green Transitions: pink

Introduction: In Truman Capote's //In Cold Blood,// he is relating his views and thoughts about a small, forgotten town called Holcomb in Kansas. Capote uses tone and diction to relate how plain and boring the town is. He also incorporates the diction to create images on how plain and unpopulated the town is. These writing elements can be analyzed together to conclude that Capote views Holcomb as a plain town which is irrelevant to be mentioned until a certain event takes place in November of 1959.

Body Paragraphs: An author's diction is their conscious selection of words to push his or her point across. Capote's language is very plain; there is almost no level of sophistication. This, alongwith his boring and uncaring tone convey his views of Holcomb. When depicting how the people of Holcomb are, Capote tells the reader of how the ﻿"local accent is barbed with a praire-twang." This is Capote's way of relating to other southerners on how he sees their accent. Capote continues to convey a view of the town in describing the landscape. When speaking of the geographical view of the town, Capote writes of how the land turns "from the thickest dust into the dirtiest mud." His tone is just bored and plain. He does not care to elaborate on the beauties of the land. Then again, the town does not seem very nourishing for an author to seem excited to write about. Capote's tone is almost mocking the small town in Kansas. When he is describing the post office of the town, Capote makes a mention of the Chief. He mocks the chiefs existence by simply adding "Super Chief" and "El Capitan" to the end of his mention. His tone is jokingly reaching out to the Kansans who would understand to whom he is refering to. His diction and tone almost make the town seem like a joke, and his imagery further deepens this characteristic.

Capote's imagery in the selection sort of generalizes on the blandness of the town. He paints the image in the reader's mind of an "unnamed, unshaded, unpaved" town. This tells the reader that the town is practically in the middle of no where. He goes on to show two town structures, one a building where "Dance" was advertised, another a bank that was closed down for approximately 26 years. The bank, he describes, is "one of the town's two "apartment houses"," which shows the reader how the townspeople have to settle foran ordinary building to be a place that should be fancy. In other words, the town is not economically fit to build another structure, let alone have proper use for a bank. He also mentions a cafe, in which a woman sells sandwiches, coffee, soft drinks, and even beer. This, he goes on to say, relates on how Kansas "is "dry"." This shows the reader that the town is not a sight they should want to really see. Near the end of the text, Capote writes "and that, really, is all." This creates the image of how plain the town is. It is so bland that he cannot say much else about the place.

Conclusion: In Capote's excerpt, he uses tone, diction, and imagery to convey the boring and plain characteristics of Holcomb, Kansas. His lack of exciting and sophisticated language tied with images of a rundown, empty, middle of no where town overall shows that Capote views Holcomb as a boring, uneventful town.