Like CDF, Truman Capote’s ‘novel’ published in 1965 is a retelling / chronicling of a murder, subtitled a ‘true account’. There are numerous perspectives on a gruesome event which reflect how the community reacted to the actions of the two killers. There is no ‘honour’ in Perry and Dick’s near ‘perfect’ murders but Capote generates sufficient empathy, curiosity and need for understanding to make the tale compelling. The book is full of virtuoso writing too with some ideas/descriptions that chime with Marquez’s account of thhe Gentile murder in CDF:
‘Autumns reward western Kansas for the evils that the remaining seasons impose, winter’s rough Colorado winds and hip-high, sheep slaughtering snows, the slushes and the strange land fogs of spring; and summer, when even crows seek the puny shade, and the tawny infinitude of wheatstalks bristle, blaze….(22)
‘But neither Dick’s physique nor the inky gallery adorning it made as remarkable an impression as his face, which seemed composed of mismatching parts. It was as though his head had been halved like an apple, then put together fractionally off centre…’ (42)
‘Don’t ever try to get away from here. We’ll hogtie you.’ (47) Re CDF: Margot’s testimony that had she known of the threat to Santiago Nasar, that she would have hogtied him back to her house.
‘Mercifully a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria (unreasonable anger, frustration and resentment) permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn an twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate…’ Friend Willie-Jay’s prison sermon letter to paroled Perry (55)
Eight non-stop passenger trains (none stop other than the odd freight) hurry through Holcomb every twenty-four hours. Of these, two pick up and deposit mail – an operation that as the person in charge of it fervently explains, has its tricky side. ‘Yessir, you’ve got to keep on your toes. Them trains come through here, sometimes they’re going a hundred miles an hour. The breeze alone, why it’s enough to knock you down. And when those mail sacks come flying out – sakes alive. It’s like playing tackly on a football team: Wham! Wham! WHAM! (77)
Mother Truitt (the mail messenger for Holcomb) – ‘A stocky weathered widow who wears babushka bandannas and cowboy boots (‘Most comfortable things you can put on your feet, soft as loon feather’) (77)
Daughter Myrtle Clare – ex-nightclub proprietor, now local postmistress – ‘a gaunt trouser wearing, woollen shirted, cowboy-booted, ginger-coloured, gingery-tempered woman of unrevealed age. (78)
By the end of chapter 1 we know who’s been killed and who’s done it…’A few miles north (of Olathe) in the pleasant kitchen of a modest farmhouse, Dick was consuming a Sunday dinner. The others at the table – his mother, his father, his younger brother – were not conscious of anything uncommon in his manner…When the meal was over, the three male members of the family settled in the parlour to watch a televised basketball game. The broadcast had only begun when the father was startled to hear Dick snoring; as he remarked to the younger boy, he never thought he’d see the day when Dick would rather sleep than watch basketball. But of course he did not understand how very tired Dick was, did not know that his dozing son had, among other things, driven over eight hundred miles in the past twenty-four hours…’ (‘among other things’ – killing four innocent people!)
Perry’s sense of FATE: ‘Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won’t. Or will – depending. As long as you live there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it’s bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.’ (100)
Perry’s Dream – Since I was a kid, i’ve had this same dream. Where I’m in Africa. A jungle. I’m moving through the trees towards a tree standing all alone. Jesus it smells bad that tree; it kind of makes me sick, the way it stinks. Only its beautiful to look at – it has blue leaves and diamonds hanging everywhere. Diamonds like oranges. That’s why I’m there – to pick myself a bushel of diamonds. But I know the minute I reach up, a snake is gonna fall on me. A snake that guards the tree. This fat sonofabitch living in the branches living in the branches…I go to pick one, I have the diamond in my hand, I’m pulling at it when the snake lands on top of me. We wrestle around, but he’s a slippery sonofabitch and I can’t get hold, he’s crushing me, you can hear my legs cracking. Now comes the part which makes me sweat even to think about. See he starts to swallow me. Feet first. Like going down in quick-sand…then the parrot appeared, taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower [and] gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him away to ‘paradise’ (101) Thus the snake, the custodian of the diamond bearing tree, never finished devouring him but was itself devoured.’
On the run in Mexico – ‘The car was moving. A hundred feet ahead, a dog trotted along the side of the road. Dick swerved towards it. It was an old half-dead mongrel, brittle boned and mangy, and the impact, as it met the car, was little more that what a bird might make. But Dick was satisfied, ‘Boy…We sure splattered him…’ (120)
Perry’s things – books, notebooks – ‘What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset…’ (153)
Perry worries that Dick has been caught and will confess – ‘But no, he was imagining too much. Dick would never do that – ’spill his guts’. (Re CDF – guts throughout)
Dick and Perry have breakfast in the same place as the KBI detectives (of all the bars in all the towns…)
Perry goaded by Agent Dewey who recounts Dick’s confession and his estimation of P as a ‘natural born killer’ – Perry responds with his own confession. (234)
Waiting for trial – ‘The topmost branches of a snow laden elm brushed against the window of the ladies’ cell. Squirrels lived in the tree and after weeks of tempting them with leftover breakfast scraps, Perry lured one off a branch on to the window sill and through the bars. It was a male squirrel with auburn fur. He named it Red, and Red soon settled down, apparently content to share his friend’s captivity. Perry taught him several tricks: to play with a paper ball, to beg, to perch on Perry’s shoulder. (235) (Like the parrot!)
Perry’s mental state – ‘…Dr Satten’s contention [was] that when Smith attacked Mr Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside a schizophrenic darkness, for it was not entirely a flesh and blood man he ’suddenly discovered’ himself destroying.’ (302)
Closing speeches – Pros – ‘There is only one way to assure that these men will never again roam the towns and cities of this land. We request the maximum penalty – death…’ (303)
Def – ‘It is a relic of barbarism. The law tells us that the taking of a human life is wrong, then goes ahead and sets the example. Which is almost as wicked as the crime it punished. The state has no right to inflict it. It isn’t effective. It doesn’t deter crime, but merely cheapens human life and gives rise to more murders…’
Judge – What are you going to do with these men that bind a man hand and foot and cut his throat and blow out his brains? Give them the minimum penalty? Yes and that’s only one of four counts. What about Kenyon Clutter, a young boy with his whole life before him, tied helplessly in sight of his father’s death struggle. Or young Nancy Clutter, hearing the gunshots and knowing her time was next. Nancy begging for her life: ‘Don’t. Oh please don’t. Please. Please” What agony! What unspeakable torture! And there remains the mother, bound and gagged and having to listen until at last the killers, these defendants before you, entered her room, focused a flashlight in her eyes, and let the blast of a shotgun end the existence of an entire house-hold…’(305)
Perry’s death – ‘Steps noose, mask, but before the mask was adjusted, the prisoner spat his chewing gum into the chaplain’s outstretched palm. Dewey (Kansas Detective) shut his eyes; he kept them shut until he heard the thud-snap that announces a rope-broken neck…Smith, though he was the true murderer aroused another response [in Dewey], for Perry possessed a quality, the aura of an exiled animal, a creature walking wounded, that the detective could not disregard. He remembered his first meeting with Perry in the interrogation room at Police HQ in Las Vegas – the dwarfish man seated in the metal chair, his small booted feet not quite brushing the floor. And when Dewey now opened his eyes, that is what he saw: the same childish feet, tilted, dangling…’ (341)
Life changing moments – Great Expectations – London, falling and failing in love - discovering more of the mysteries of the book / 9) Beginning of the End – Vol2 Ch20 – Magwitch returns – Pip’s reaction – Compare Dickens’ setting with Ch1 Predict what Pip will do? 10) Beginning of End2 – Death all around – Miss H and Magwitch die but the truth is revealed. 11) Beginning of the End3 – How do you end a book like this? – weaving strands together – brainstorm endings to books – types of endings / Predict this one? / Choose your ending – Original vs Revised – which do you prefer and why? / 12) Assessment Prep (AP) Writing a Synopsis of GE. 13) Choose a chapter to act / Choose / Re-read chapter and write synopsis. 14) Scripting - Intro to scripting / draft no.1 / Act the first draft. 15) Scripting pt2 – Analyse extracts from respective chapters – language focus / Script using Dickens’ techniques. 16) Scripting pt3 – GE pub quiz / Script / Perform draft. 17) GE pub quiz – Scripting and Playing it. 18) GE analysis pub quiz – applying assessment criteria and questions to extracts from each group’s chapters. 19) Mock Trial pt1- Starter / Graphic Novel scaffold for all groups / Trial prep. 20) Mock Trial pt2 – R v Magwitch / R v Pumblechook, Havisham *2 / R v Jaggers / R v Pip + Herbert. 21) Review – Assessment prep – Character description starter based on PEE / Background brainstorm / Power of Context brainstorm / Setting / Script and Play each group’s play with Peer review / Joke ending - Hunky Herbert’s story. 
In January 1917 Wilfred Owen described four days in the front line in a famous letter to his mother that is seen as the source for ‘Sentry’. The letter is reproduced in the Digital Poetry Archive and is full of astonishing material – 