Welcome/Instructions

The Reflection Blog

During our study of the text, In Cold Blood, students will be required to make one post per week to an online reflection blog. Think of the blog as an opportunity to have an ongoing conversation about the text. Each week there will be new quotations from the text posted to the blog. Your task is to interpret, react, support and disagree with the ideas. You’re not simply restating facts from the text but instead you are justifying your positions and reacting to the ideas of your peers. Be sure that the points you’re making are clearly explained and developed; this will encourage a challenging conversation and open up the possibility for debate on various interpretations of the text. The first posting will be done in class as a group, but after the first post, students will be responsible for posting on their own time unless otherwise specified.

Each entry should include:

*Your first and last name

*The quote number

*The names of any students to whom you are responding.

*A page number should be included for any additional direct quotes posted to the blog.

*The date and time of your entry should be automatically recorded.

***All entries are due by 4:00 each Friday.***

Week 5

This post is due by the end of the school day on Monday, December 19th.

Quote #1: "But also--I'll be honest--I had faith in Dick; he struck me as being very practical, the masculine type, and I wanted the money as much as he did. I wanted to get it and go to Mexico. But I hoped we could do it without violence" (234).

Quote #2: "I wasn't kidding him. I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat" (244).

Quote #3: "Although none of the journalists anticipated violence, several had predicted shouted abuse. But when the crowd caught sight of the murderers, with their escort of blue-coated highway patrolmen, it fell silent, as though amazed to find them humanly shaped" (248).

Quote#4: Then he said something about a movie...said this show took place in Biblical times, and there was a scene where a man was flung off a balcony, thrown to a mob of men and women, who tore him to pieces. And he said that was what came to mind when he saw the crowd on the Square. The man being torn apart. And the idea that maybe that was what they might do to him. Said it scared him so bad his stomach still hurt...Course he was wrong, and I told him so--nobody was going to harm him, regardless of what he'd done; folks around here aren't like that" (253).

Quote # 5: "And now I think of you, and wonder what you think about. I didn't know what to say to my brother in the last weeks before he died. But I know what I'd say now. And this is why I am writing you: because God made you as well as me and He loves you just as He loves me, and for the little we know of God's will what has happened to you could have happened to me" (261).

Quote # 6: "And most of the ministers are opposed to capital punishment, say it's immoral, unchristian; even the Reverend Cowan, the Clutters' own minister and a close friend of the family, he's been preaching against the death penalty in this very case. Remember, all we can hope is to save your lives. I think we stand as good a chance here as anywhere" (266).

Quote # 7: "I have always felt a remarkable exhilaration being among people with a purpose and a sense of dedication to carry out that purpose. I felt this about you in your presence" (276).

Quote # 8: "'There's nobody much I can talk to,' she told her companion. 'I don't mean people haven't been kind, neighbors and all. And strangers, too--strangers have wrote letters to say they know how hard it must be and how sorry they are. Nobody's said a mean word, either to Walter or me ...Sheila, that's her, she says it's not our fault what happened. But it seems to me like people are looking at me and thinking, Well, she must be to blame somehow. The way I raised Dick. Maybe I did do something wrong'" (287).

Week 4

This post is due by the end of the school day on Monday, December 12th.

Quote # 1: "He thought how 'queer' it was, 'egomaniacal.' Imagine going all out to impress a man you were going to kill, a man who wouldn't be alive ten minutes from now--not if the plan he and Dick devised went smoothly" (173).

Quote # 2: "'I wanted to help him. I hoped I might change a few of his ideas. Now I know better. The rights of other people mean nothing to Perry. He has no respect for anyone...' she said. 'But I'm afraid of him. I always have been. He can seem so warmhearted and sympathetic. Gentle. He cries so easaily. Sometimes music sets him off, and when he was a little boy he used to cry because he thought a sunset was beautiful. Or the moon. Oh, he can fool you. He can make you feel so sorry for him--" (181-182).

Quote # 3: "'Myself, I don't want to hear another word,' said Mrs. Hartman. 'I told them, We can't go on like this. Distrusting everybody, scaring each other to death. What I say is, if you want to talk about it stay out of my place'" (191).

Quote # 4: "The sound of Dick's voice was like an injection of some potent narcotic, a drug that, invading his veins, produced a delirium of colliding sensations: tension and relief, fury and affection" (194).

Quote # 5: "Envy was constantly with him; the Enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have" (200).

Week 3

This week's post will be due at the end of the school day on Monday, December 5th.

Quote # 1:"'When I was a girl', she had once told a friend, 'I was pretty sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things, and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tried. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough'" (122).

Quote # 2:"I truthfully feel none of us have anyone to blame for whatever we have done with our own personal lives. It has been proven that at the age of 7 most of us have reached the age of reason-which means we do, at this age, understand & know the difference between right and wrong. Of course--environment plays an awfully important part in our lives..." (139)

Quote # 3:"IT IS NO SHAME TO HAVE A DIRTY FACE--THE SHAME COMES WHEN YOU KEEP IT DIRTY" (140).

Quote # 4:"'It is almost impossible for a man who enjoys freedom with all of its prerogatives, to realize what it means to be deprived of that freedom'--Said by Earle Stanley Gardner" (147).

Quote # 5:"The real thing is I've come to feel I know Herb and the family better than they ever knew themselves. I'm haunted by them. I guess I always will be. Until I know what happened" (148)

Week 1

Please respond to one of the quotes below by the end of the school week (Friday, November 21, by5:00 PM)



Quotation # 1: “I can’t imagine you afraid. No matter what happened, you’d talk your way out of it” (36).



Quotation # 2: "The compulsively superstitious person is also very often a serious believer in fate; that was the case with Perry. He was here, and embarked on the present errand, not because he wished to be but because fate had arranged the matter; he could prove it-..." (42)



Quotation # 3: “You pursue the negative…You want not to give a damn, to exist without responsibility, without faith or friends or warmth” (44-45).



Quotation # 4: “The mood of a man insuring his life is not unlike that of a man signing his will; thoughts of mortality must occur” (47).



Quotation # 5: "A year ago, when they first encountered each other, he'd thought Perry 'a good guy' if a bit 'stuck on himself,' 'sentimental,' too much 'the dreamer.' He had liked him but not considered him especially worth cultivating until, one day, Perry described a murder, telling how, simply for 'the hell of it,' he had killed a colored man in Las Vegas-beaten him to death with a bicycle chain. The anecdote elevated Dick's opinion of little Perry; he began to see more of him, and like Willie-Jay, though for dissimilar reasons, gradually decided that Perry possessed unusual and valuable qualities...Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, 'a natural killer'-absolutely sane, but conscienceless, and capable of dealing, with or without motive, the coldest-blooded deathblows" (55).

Week 2

This post is due by 5:00 PM, Monday, November 28.

Quote # 1: "'Everything Herb had, he earned-with the help of God. He was a modest man but a proud man, as he had a right to be. He raised a fine family. He made something of his life.' But that life...how was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this-smoke, thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky." (79)



Quote # 2: "...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." (92)



Quote # 3: "When Perry said 'I think there must be something wrong with us,' he was making an admission he 'hated to make.' After all, it was 'painful' to imagine that one might be 'not just right'-particularly if whatever was wrong was not your own fault but 'maybe a thing you were born with.'" (110)

Class post

Now that I have demonstrated, I would like you to respond to a quote during class. This first posting is due by the end of class today.



Quote #1“But afterward the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and over again-those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers” (5).