Reliving The Trauma: Truman Capote’s Writing Of In Cold Blood

Truman Capote was a well-known contemporary American writer, but hischildhood was spent without parental love. Parental neglect brought him permanentpsychological trauma and had a great impact on his writing. For Capote, writing hadbeen a successful way to relieve his childhood trauma until he started the writing of InCold Blood, which made him relive the traumatic experience in his childhood and gettraumatized again. Accordingly, trauma theory is applied to analyze firstly the childhoodtrauma and symptoms of Capote and the protagonist, Perry Smith, and to explore whatthe writing of In Cold Blood brings Capote, who never recovers from the emotionaltrauma caused by the writing of In Cold Blood.This thesis includes six chapters. The first chapter consists of the introduction toCapote and In Cold Blood, literature review, the structure and significance of the thesis.The second chapter explicates trauma theory, which is the theoretical basis of the thesis,including definition of trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and typical traumaticevents. Chapter Three and Chapter Four, on the basis of trauma theory and relatedresources, respectively study the traumatic experiences of Capote and Perry Smith, andprovide a careful analysis of their symptoms. Capote’s childhood trauma is mainlycaused by parental neglect and sexual abuse. He has demonstrated the traumaticsymptoms of separation anxiety disorder and oppositional disorder. As for Perry, inaddition to parental neglect, he has experienced sexual abuse and traffic accident as well.Perry has suffered from repeated dreams and displayed symptoms of flashbacks andparanoid schizophrenia. Chapter Five explores how Capote relives his childhood traumaand is traumatized again throughout the process of preparing and writing In Cold Bloodtalking with the two killers, learning about their trauma and their inhuman deeds,stopping helping them seek higher court appeal, an act to bring about the end of theirlives as well as the end to the plot of his novel, and, last but not least, witnessing thedeath of the two killers. Suffering from trauma, Capote has displayed traumaticsymptoms of avoidance, alcohol and drug misuse and hallucinations. Chapter Six is theconclusion of the thesis. It summarizes the preceding analysis about Capote’s andPerry’s traumatic experiences and symptoms, and ultimately draws the conclusion thatwhile writing has always brought Capote success, the writing of In Cold Blood causesmany emotional problems in his life than it has solved; he has been traumatized again and virtually destroyed, never to recover again.