In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

The novel In Cold Blood is authored by Truman Capote, who is highly known for his non-fiction writing style. The selected novel is based on the story of a small-town family who was murdered brutally from gunshots, including the two parents and their four children (Goodreads, n.a.). The novel is about the investigation where there were no clues and no clear motive behind the murder (Bauer & Tandon, 2019). This paper aims to discuss the use of symbols that the author used in this novel, which are the yellow bird, two grey cats, and the map.

The Yellow Bird

There are few instances in the book where the yellow bird appears, signifying a theme within the books text. It would be essential to understand Perry, one of the two young killers mentioned in the novel, who had dreams about the bird. It has a denotation of s symbolic message, which is relevant to a theme for this book.

The stating of the yellow bird initially starts when Perry is talking to Dick, another of the killers in the novel, about the way fate works and how life is shaped by the functioning of fate (Danny, 2009). He tells him that he has been dreaming about one type of dream since he was a child. The dream is about a tree bearing diamonds, but there is an unpleasant smell when Perry reaches there.

He is driven by his excitement for the diamonds and wants to take them, no matter what happens, and this is where a snake appears beside the tree. Perry is not concerned about the snake, but the snake does not spare him; it takes Perry by his legs and crushes them where Dick seemed uninterested in the rest of his dream. Perry is again taken back to his dreams, where in the beginning, a yellow bird was seen. When he spent his days in the orphanage where he had to bear with the trauma of nuns beating, those were the days when this bird appeared in his dreams showing that it was inflicting pain onto the nuns and taking Perry to a better place.

The role of the bird could be seen as that of a savior and hope who tried to take him away from his disagreeable surroundings and people. The bird freed him of the hostility that Perry, as a child, had to tolerate when he was a child. It could be inferred that the yellow bird symbolizes the theme of freedom and lifesaving power for Perry. When Perry was in his darkest hour, the bird was there to help him.

Although the role of the yellow bird kept...

…is shown in the context of another character of the novel, Mr. Clutter. A map of River Valley farm was seen in his belongings which could be deduced that portrayed his own family. He treasured his family and was reminded of them along with his home and work.

He was proud of his family and everything he had in his hand at the current time frame of the novel, which was evidence that he was proud of his ownership of the map. The recurrence of the map but in each characters perception, which was different from the other, is the writers ability to use the themes aptly in certain incidents and appearances.

Conclusion

Capote has ingeniously written the novel with a thrill and emotional perspective that the reader is hooked onto the last page. It is considered one of the best fiction works in the crime section until now. The use of themes and symbols has been remarkably utilized since capital punishment had to be explained from different standpoints since the main subject of the novel.

It was also seen that each symbol had highlighted a different theme from the eyes of each character. The theme also kept on changing with the progress of the story. It helped bring the structure and pace to the ongoing plot intending to make readers think about the exploitations of…