Capote's In Cold Blood: The Search for Meaningful Design

JOHN HOLLOWELL Capote's in Cold Blood: The Search for Meaningful Design However long it takes, it may be the rest of my life, I'm going to know what happened in that house: the why and the who. Alvin Dewey, Chief Detective I have finished the book, but in a sense I haven't finished it: it keeps churning around in my head. It particularizes itselfnow and then, but not in the sense that it brings about a total conclusion. Capote, New York Times Book Review, 16 January 1966 In early studies of the new journalism and the nonfiction novel, critics have sought to identify the fictional techniques that make the nonfiction novel "read" like a novel. In The New Journalism, Tom Wolfe speaks of the realistic novel's "emotional involvement," or its "gripping" and "absorbing" quality (31). Perhaps the most often cited of these devices of realism, according to Wolfe, is "scene by scene reconstruction and resorting as little as possible to sheer historical narration" (31). The supposed effect on the reader is a reconstruction of events with full dialogue and psychological depth without the anonymous summary or narration of traditional journalism. More recent readers of Capote's in Cold Blood have discussed the degree of closure and resolution such scenes achieve with respect to reading the overall meaning of the Clutter murders. Brian Conniff, for example, examines the crucial role of what he calls psychological accidents in the recreation of the crimes and Capote's overall narrative plan (74-94), while Phyllis Frus adopts the opposing view that Arizona Quarterly Volume 53, Number 3, Autumn 1997 Copyright © 1997 by Arizona Board of Regents issn 0004- 1610 98John Hoüowell Capote's method allows for the murders to be explained and rationalized within a framework of middle-class ideology and psychological analysis (120-56). I want to explore the category of "meaningful design ," apparently drawn from Detective Dewey's verbal world, since it strategically offers an explanatory framework for understanding murder. In fact, the careful construction of the confession, trial, and execution scenes refers to this standard, one that promises to resolve vexing questions for readers of in Cold Blood. Capote's strategy, however, is to raise the possibility ofrational order without ever fully endorsing it, often revealing that random and accidental events shape the history of the crime. Capote's narrative method also emphasizes two language systems —the first based on punishment, the second on psychological analysis of personality—that demonstrate opposing ways ofjudging human behavior. This conflict undermines any straightforward rational design for comprehending murder or its punishment. To evaluate these issues of closure and meaning in In Cold Blood, I examine three critical scenes in detail—the confessions of the killers, the courtroom verdicts, and the executions—to provide the best opportunity to identify a totalized , clear sense of an ending. Until Part 3 of the book, "Answer," Capote's method emphasizes the mysterious, evasive nature of the crimes and their effects on the townsfolk of Holcomb, Kansas. The three scenes I have selected are presented through the eyes ofAlvin Dewey, the law-and-order hero of the book. Since Capote's narrative method does not allow the author to speak in his own, first-person voice, Dewey acts as the central intelligence guiding our integration of plot elements. The reader is likely to identify with Dewey's viewpoint as she identifies with Dewey's search for design, since it will presumably create an explanatory framework that will allow her to understand the bizarre murders. These three scenes provide a basis for reading the murders, for placing them within a coherent design for In Cold Blood as a whole. The narrative promises to create an understanding of the crimes and get to the bottom of the killers' motives—if not through the legal system, then perhaps through the process of psychological analysis. Dewey's role is critical since his motives and desires allow readers to identify with the eventual capture and punishment of the suspects. The confession scene develops in "Answer" when Dick Hickock and Perry Smith are arrested in Las Vegas as their cross-country ride comes The Search for Meaningful Design99 to an...