The Lackluster Town of Holcomb - 1056 Words

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, A mans interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town (Thoreau). Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood, disagrees with Thoreaus sentiment and utilizes his description of Holcomb, Kansas to produce an illustration of a rustic village within the minds of his audience. Capote portrays the town as utterly average as well as drab and dreary in nature so that he can convince the audience that Holcomb was nothing more than a haphazard hamlet and to foreshadow the coming drama (para. 2). Through an ingenious application of vivid imagery, superfluous syntax, fantastic figurative language, as well as a tone laced with melancholy, the speaker effectively demonstrates that Holcomb is nothing special and induces a feeling of normalcy and simple serenity within the audience while simultaneously foreshadowing the future turmoil. In the excerpt from In Cold Blood, Capote couples intriguing imagery with his gl oomy and, at times, dull tone to emphasize the fact that Holcomb, like Maycomb, the setting of Harper Lees novel To Kill a Mockingbird, is a desolate place deprived of drama as well as to foreshadow that change is coming to the tiny town. Capote uses imagery to paint a picture in the minds of his readers of a ghost town utterly destitute of life and completely isolated in the wilderness of Arkansas. When the speaker monotonously says, ...irrelevant sign, this one in flaking gold on a