Education Standards
Capote's In Cold Blood
Overview
Here are several activities for In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: group work over the author and times, a review and creative writing activity, a discussion of themes, and a creatvie writing rubric.
Knowing the Author
I take notes during the presentation and make a quiz from my notes to use as an assessment.
Truman Capote
You (and your partner/group) will be doing a power point over a portion of Truman Capote’s life. Everyone in class will be responsible for taking the notes, including me. Then, there will be a test/quiz over the notes.
The topics:
Childhood
Writing Career (Excluding In Cold Blood )
The writing of In Cold Blood
D. His Personal Life
E. Events during his lifetime
Your Power Point should include:
A. 5 or more slides
B. 5 or more pictures/graphics
C. 12 or more facts
Review Literary Devices
These are terms students should be very familiar with at this point, but it is always a good idea to review.
What is a simile?
What is alliteration?
Using a Mentor Text to Inspire Creativity
Go through the googleslide of sentences written by Capote and try your hand at writing similes.
Theme
This could be used as small group discussion or assigned as an essay.
Major Themes - In Cold Blood
Modern-day Mythology/Epic Storytelling
In Cold Blood is crafted like a modern-day tragedy, on the scale of one of the Greek dramas, and deals with many of the same universal themes: murder, vengeance, and the pursuit of justice. This, for Capote, was the power of his new literary genre, the nonfiction novel: to take events from the contemporary world and elevate them to epic storytelling proportions, enabling them to reflect on broader truths about humanity.
What truth about humanity do you think In Cold Blood reveals?
American Dream
Capote assembles the separate facts and perspectives about the Clutter case from multiple sources into a narrative that speaks profoundly on the nature of human life and death, criminality, American society and the pursuit of individual happiness -- reinventing in the process many of our modern-day forms of mythology (for example, the myth of the American dream).
Which character do you think pursues the American dream the most, what is the American dream he or she wants, and what keeps him or her from finding the American dream?
Family
Family life is a key determinant of individual character in the the book. The Clutters, who symbolize the utmost integrity of family life, are obliterated by Perry, who represents everything it means to come from a broken home. The Clutters’ uprightness is related to the strength of their family, as Perry’s criminality is connected to the dissolution of his own kinship. In spirit, Dick is still wedded to his first wife, and his dreams of becoming self-sufficient are linked to the ability to support her and their three sons. The strength of a person’s family ties has the larger implication of whether that person can live happily, well-off, and in a self-determined fashion.
A continuing argument in psychology is nature vs. nurture. Define what you believe nature vs. nurture means?
Do you believe nature or nurture (or lack thereof) plays the biggest role in the way Nancy, Dick and Perry turn out and how does nature or nurture influence them?
Composing a Narrative
Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction or Memoir
Requirements:
Build on what we’ve covered:
*Grabbing Opening – Try describing the setting as an opening or state the
moral of your story or begin with a line of dialogue.
*An inch wide and a mile deep. Keep the time span of your essay short - less than an hour is best; trying to cover several days will lead to a boring, sketchy essay that lacks detail and description
Apply Rules of Narratives:
*build to a climax but remember life is full of peaks and low points
*use a consistent point of view
*Pacing
*focus on and develop the important events that pertain to your theme and
help achieve your purpose
*skip over or diminish the unimportant events like what the main character ate or wore
*use shorter sentences and paragraphs when the action is building to
climax
Requirements
*The purpose is to entertain or relate an experience.
*You must have a theme.
Although narratives don’t always have a stated theme, yours must to receive an ‘A.’
*You must have at least three lines of dialogue throughout the essay.
*properly formatted
*Sensory Detail
*one paragraph, preferably in or near the climax, should contain details that appeal heavily to one sense.
Tips
*Varied word choice and specific nouns - not a car - my 2018 Dodge Dart or the clunker I inherited from my reckless driver of a brother.
*Literary Devices - At least three of two different types
Length
*5 pages typed
Points
*65
Don’t forget an intriguing title, a header, and the due date.