François Villon

Caitlin Barnum

 Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

July 31, 2007 

Frères humains qui après nous vivez,

N’ayez les cuers contre nous endurcis,

Car, se pitié de nous povres avez,

Dieu en aura plus tost de vous mercis

                Francois Villon

  “My brothers who live after us,

Don’t harden you hearts against us too,

If you have mercy now on us.

God may have mercy upon you.” 

“Brothers that live when we are dead,

dont don’t set yourself against us too.

If you could pity us instead,

then God may sooner pity you.”   

The above poem is from Francois Villion’s Ballade Des Pendus, a poem of the horrible fate of people condemned to death.

Francois Villon, was a French poet, a thief and a vagabond. He is most well known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, which he wrote while serving time in prison. He was born into a very poor family but managed to attend the University of Paris, where he lived a very loose life. Villon killed a man after a fight broke out. He was convicted and sentenced to banishment.

I like the second translation of the poem better. It’s more up front and it doesn’t sound like Villon is trying to butter up the point he’s trying to get across. I also think Capote chose these words to put in the beginning of the poem because this book is a controversy of the death penalty. I guess you could say it’s a form of foreshadowing. Or maybe it’s just the way he feels about the out come of the trial. It is his book, so maybe that’s what he thought. This poet also is significant to the book because, Villion, was a murderer. It’s kind of ironic actually.

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/556.html

http://www.umass.edu/wsp/lectures/translation/villon.html

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Villon

Capotes Tone

Caitlin Barnum

Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

July 31st, 2007        

     Capote is defiantly an objective narrator! While introducing the characters and the story in the beginning of the book, he would start to get into the story, but then stop and give a very lengthy description of the characters thoughts, everyday actions, and past history. Throughout the story he pauses to go into great detail about the smallest things.
      E.x. Pg. 30 “The only daughter of a prosperous wheat grower named Fox, the adored sister of three older brothers, she had not been spoiled but spared, let to suppose that life was a sequence of agreeable events…. When she was eighteen, inflamed by a biography of Florence Nightingale, she enrolled as a student nurse at St. Rose’s Hospital in Great Bend, Kansas.”
Because Capote is not a character within the story, he could not be a subjective narrator. He is an observer, and overlooks the story. He expresses the thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions of the characters and events.
          I really think this use of narration gives great depth to the story. Capote does an excellent job of getting you into the story. That makes the murder even more dramatic!
I feel like I ‘know’ the characters on a deep and personal level. They feel real.

Setting

    

Caitlin Barnum

Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

July 29, 2007

 

 

 Holcomb is a very, very ‘plain’ town. As Capote says, “Not that there is much to see – simply an aimless congregation of buildings…”. There is one building of apartment houses, a post office, two filling stations, and one that doubles as a grocery store. And there is the Holcomb School. You can see for miles vast expanses of cattle, horses, and crops.

For the early 1960′s, in Kansas, this was probably one of the higher, more developed towns. If you look at Morehead City, and compare it to cities such as Raleigh or Charlotte, it seems very under developed, such does Holcomb. If we took Morehead and set it in the same time period, we probably wouldn’t have much more than they do now.

The social classes are the same everywhere. There are farmers with large fields, huge houses, and are very fortunate. They live in the ‘High Class’ part of town. Then there are fortunate farmers, who have what they need to get by. Then there are the poor farmers who are scrounging for everything they have. Same in Morehead, but just with a lot more professions than just farming. We have the different classes, and it is a noticeable thing.

The in depth description of the town really makes the reader feel at home and in the story. I know when I read, I visualize where the characters are when they are doing something. So this helped me really understand the setting. The town sort of gives you and at home feeling, very secure. It seems as though everyone in the town is very close, helping one another, doing lots of community activities. So it’s unlikely that a horrific murder could occur in such a town.