One obvious reason this is characterized as literature rather than just history would be the dialogue that Capote includes. On page 46 and 47, Capote shows the reader a friendly exchange of dialogue between the insurance salesman and Mr. Clutter. This is an example of embellishment by the author for the sake of readability because it would be nearly impossible for a salesman to precisely recite a conversation that he had with a client. Through his extensive research Capote knew of the meeting between Clutter and Johnson and probably had a general idea of their conversation, but to make it read more like a novel and be more personal to the reader he added detailed dialogue.

er want to hurt these people"? With less than a quarter of the book devoted to getting to know the Clutter family it seemed as though Capote needed to suck the reader in quickly, and not leave any questions as to why the family may have "brought on" what happened to them. Along those same lines, Capote clearly had an added sense of compassion and sympathy for Nancy, which he showed through his excessive amounts of attention in regards to h

Some common words found in the essay are:
West Capote's, Cold Blood, Dick Capote, Perry Dick, Clutter Johnson, cold blood, literature history, descriptive detail, perry dick,
Approximate Word count = 758
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)