With this nonfiction novel, Capote created, or at least perfected, a completely new form. But we suggest that In Cold Blood belongs to the genres of Psychological Thriller and Suspense, Tragedy, and Postmodernism, and let us explain why before you dive under the covers.
Well, They Die, Don't They?
Check out our definition of tragedy.
Well. Neither of our protagonists is a great man. But both are dealing with overwhelming cultural, societal, and financial obstacles. People who are physically compromised, biracial, poor, and non-educated are not necessarily bound to be criminals. But we're betting that Perry and Dick would hold that opinion. And the tragic flaw part? They've got that one nailed.
You've got to admit, In Cold Blood depends on our deep, voyeuristic interest in human suffering to create its drama.
Yeah, we went there.
Certainly the Clutters suffer. Remember Maria Dewey's dream in which Bonnie Clutter appears to her and says, "There's nothing more terrible than being murdered, nothing!" (2/189) We're betting that Bonnie is right. And everybody else suffers, in one way or another. The townspeople suffer survivor's guilt, guilt from not having heard the noises that night, and fear of being next. The police suffer frustration at not being able to find the killers, at not having saved the Clutters, and at losing to the firemen in the Protectors of Society Handball League. (Kidding! We just wanted to see if you were awake.)
Postmodernism, or Try to Wrap Your Mind Around This
Postmodernism deals with the belief that reality is not mirrored in human understanding, but instead constructed as the human mind tries to understand its own personal reality. This seems like an especially good genre for Capote's work, as few of us reading this book have any personal experience with being killed in our sleep (hands up? anyone? ) and we have to try to understand it on our own terms, thank goodness, rather than from personal experience.
So, in a postmodern work, each reader is expected to bring a little something different to the reading of the book, instead of being blasted by the teacher for having a different or "wrong" reading. The reader creates his or her own interpretation. It's very heavy, really.
The really cool thing about postmodern works is that they usually have three identifying traits, like the animals that Jack Hanna trots out on Letterman (except that works of postmodernism don't pee on anybody). The traits of postmodernism are: a fractured or nonlinear narrative, experiments in form and style, and exploration of the unexplorable and the unrepeatable.
Now, in English: A fractured or nonlinear narrative means the story isn't told in the order in which it happened. Remember how In Cold Blood was told by the narrator? First you read about the flatlands of Kansas, then you read about Herb Clutter, then you read about Perry waiting for Dick in a diner, then you read about Nancy, then you read about Dick Hickock. That, friends, is a nonlinear narrative. It jumps around from person to person and from location to location, and from past to present and back again, while telling the story.
A postmodern narrative experiments in form and style. Now, while In Cold Blood isn't as experimental as, say, James Joyce's Ulysses, Capote does a lot of this in his novel. Look at how the novel's major emotional events are narrated by different characters: the story of the actual Clutter killings is told by Perry and the story about finding the Clutter bodies is told by Larry Hendricks, while the execution of Hickock and Smith is seen through Agent Dewey's eyes. The differing narratives serve as a real experiment with both style and form—each narrator has a different style of speech, for example, while the changing narrative disrupts the traditional idea of the omniscient, singular, and uninvolved narrator.
The unrepeatable and the unexplorable? As Capote tries to bring us into the lives and minds of the murderers and the murdered, he acknowledges, by using multiple narrators and multiple perspectives, that there is no one truth here. Four of the main characters are dead at the beginning of the novel and the other two are dead by the end, so all direct witnesses to the main event are conveniently kaput before we read a word. It is up to Capote to make something believable out of this jumble of ingredients. If it doesn't cook up into a neat dish, well, that's postmodernism for you.
Seriously, Didn't You Hear That Tapping Sound Outside?
Psychological thriller and suspense is a sub-genre of the thriller, which has nothing to do with Michael Jackson. This genre has everything that pregnant women and heart patients are supposed to avoid: a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectations, and huge dollops of uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and terror. Pound for pound and page for page, In Cold Blood is one of the most serious contenders in American literature for the Psychological Thriller and Suspense Trophy.