Tone Change

In Section 3 of in Cold blood, there is a change in the tone, or attitude in which Capote addresses the murderer’s. Capote begins to formalize his “relationship” with Dick and Perry when referring to them in the third section of the book. In this section, instead of calling them “Dick” and “Perry”, he calls them “Hickock” and “Smith”. Clearly Capote is taking a more formal, reporter-like tone in this section, “Just because Smith had traveled to Kansas to visit his friend Hickock, and just because Hickock possessed a gun of the caliber used to commit the crime, and just because the suspects had arranged a false alibi to account for there whereabouts on the night of November 14, they were not necessarily the murderers” (189). Clearly one can see the way in which Capote formally refers to the murderers as “Smith and “Hickock”. But unless you compare to the quotations earlier in the book where Capote informally calls them “Dick” and “Perry”, then one cannot see the dramatic difference it actually is. For reasons unknown, Capote avidly resumes position as the reporter in the novel, this can be seen when one notes the formality in which Capote addresses the previously, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.