Xavier McDonald
Mrs. Banister
AP Language 3rd
12 November 2014
Rhetorical Analysis: “Nancy’s Bedroom” Well-known writer, Truman Capote, used many strategies to catch his reader's attention. In “Nancy’s Bedroom” from In Cold Blood, Capote's purpose is to express sympathy for Nancy. Capote shows Nancy’s feminine side as well as her innocence. He adopts a gloomy and serious tone in order to create sorrow in the reader's mind about her murder. First of all, he uses vivid imagery to describe Nancy’s bedroom. He gives a visual image of how her room looks. Capote writes, “Nancy’s bedroom was the smallest, most personal room in the house-girlish, and as frothy as a ballerina’s tutu. Walls, ceiling, and everything else except a bureau and a writing…show more content… “Other pictures, of horses, of cats deceased but unforgotten-like “poor Boobs,” who had died not long ago and most mysteriously (she suspected poison) -encumbered her desk.” The parentheses in this sentence show that she cared for the animals and allowed the reader to feel her sorrow for the animals. “Before saying her prayers, she always recorded in a dairy a few occurrences. It was a five-year diary; in the four years of its existence she had never neglected to make an entry, though the splendor of several events (Eveanna’s wedding, the birth of her nephew) and the drama of others (her “first REAL quarrel with Bobby”-a page literally tear stained) had caused her to usurp space allotted to the future.” The parentheses in these sentences were useful to show what happened throughout the day. Nancy would write in her diary every day, so she would have memories of everything she did. “(Once Mrs. Riggs, her English teacher, had returned a theme with a scribbled comment: “Good. But why written in three styles of script?” To which Nancy had replied: “Because I’m not grown-up enough to be one person with one kind of signature.”)” This shows different aspects of Nancy’s personality. She would write in different ways in just one piece of writing, to show the mood she was feeling at that time. The way she writes allowed the reader to see that she was happy, but the reader would still feel the sorrow of
