In Cold Blood

• Four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.


  Contrast of numbers foreshadows the outcome of the novel
• hard-working and neighbourly and generous


  Clutters and the Nuclear Family
• But we couldn't do it. Plain didn't have the money.


  Dick's plans and dreams
• Mr. Clutter had in large measure obtained it


  Herb's plans and dreams
• BECAUSE HE'S DEAD


  Mrs Clare's reaction to the Clutter's deaths
• we may never have another chance


  Dick and Perry's moment of briefly living their plans and dream
• to be murdered. To be murdered. No. no. there's nothing worse.


  Holcomb's reaction to the deaths
• Master of River Valley Farm


  Herb's wealth
• trim blue-serge trousers, a white shirt, a narrow dark-blue tie


  Dick's wealth and background
• as lonely and inappropriate as a seagull in a wheat field


  Perry's wealth and background
• Dewey had watched them die

  Dewey watching Dick and Perry's deaths
• it was as if he were greeting guests at his own funeral


  Dick at his execution
• the trap-door opened, and Hickock hung for all to see a full twenty minutes


  Dick's death
• I don't believe in capital punishment


  Perry on capital punishment
• it would be meaningless to apologise for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologise


  Perry's last words
• steps, noose, mask

  Perry being hung
• Dewey was certain that capital punishment is a deterrent to violent crime


  Dewey on capital punishment
• Whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat


  Final line
• The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of Western Kansas


  Opening line
• unnamed, unshaded, unpaved


  Tricolon showing Holcomb's isolation
• thickest dust into the direst mud


  Juxtaposition to describe Holcomb
• not a man to ever raise his voice


  Herb's personality
• His shoulders were broad, his hair had held its dark colour, his square-jawed confident face


  Herb's description
• if you caught a hired man drinking, out he'd go


  Herb's hiring policy
• Ordinarily, Mr Clutter's mornings began at six thirty


  Herb's ordinary morning
• A real Southern Belle


  Herb describing Nancy
• he was six feet tall and lanky


  Kenyon's description
• town darling

  Nancy's description
• Most dependable and gentlemanly


  Syndetic pair describing Bobby Rupp
• poor Bonnie's afflictions... little spells

  Bonnie's depression
• like a retired jockey, overblown and muscle-bound.


  Perry's description
• It was as though his head had been halved like an apple


  Dick's description
• as tidy as two dudes setting off on a double date


  Perry's implied homosexuality
• something radically wrong over at the Clutter place


  Mr Ewalt to the Sheriff about the murders
• There's been some kind of accident


  Mr Ewalt to the Police about the murders
• Her hands were tied behind her, and her ankles were roped together with the kind of cord you see on Venetian blinds


  Nancy's dead body
• A lot of boy-stuff scattered around. And I recognized Kenyon's glasses


  Kenyon's bedroom
• her eyes were wide open. Wide open. As though she were still looking at the killer.

  Bonnie's dead body
• the one that looked the most like himself - even though he'd been shot in the face, directly, head-on


  Kenyon's dead body
• I knew plain shooting couldn't account for that much blood


  Herb's dead body