Perry In Cold Blood

The novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, tells the story of the murder of a respectful family in Holcomb, Kansas. Four people were killed on September 15th, 1959 when two men broke into their home to rob their safe, which allegedly contained 10,000 dollars. However, they walked out the house with only 40 dollars, a radio, and the lives of four on their hands. Capote creates an attachment between the reader, the murderers, the victims, the townspeople, and the investigators. Due to this intimacy, sympathy arises for Perry regardless of him committing such an awful crime. Even if people have compassion for killers, Capote's writing objectivity allows the reader to sympathize with him. Throughout the novel, Capote includes the childhood and trauma

He has so much anger from his life and has never been in complete control of himself that when he is about to kill four people, he does because his anger has made him lose control. Even Dewey says that “When Smith attacked Mr. Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside a schizophrenic darkness” (Capote 302). Perry claims that he was not in control of his actions when he killed the Clutters and according to his criminal customs and clinical determination his reason is legitimate. Perry’s mentality issues go back to him as a child, for example, is an altercation Perry encounters when he is being beaten by a nun from his Catholic school. He goes into a trance while he sleeps to cope and it says, “It was after one of these beatings, one [Perry] could never forget…[where] the parrot appeared, [and] while he slept, a bird taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower, a warrior-angel… blinded the nuns with its beak, fed upon their eyes, slaughtered them as they pleaded for mercy, then so gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him away to paradise. (Capote 197). Perry is trying to cope with himself and his abuse by creating a fantasy where he can be alone and happy. Craving this happiness his entire life and not receiving it makes him depressed and begins his mental illness. In an interview with George Plimpton, Capote says “Perry never meant to kill the Clutters at all. He had a brain

In the novel it says that "the crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well have been killed by lightning. Except for one thing: they had experienced prolonged terror, they had suffered. And Dewey could not forget their sufferings. Nonetheless, he found it possible to look at the man beside him without anger - with, rather, a measure of sympathy - for Perry Smith's life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage or another" (Capote 245-246). Dewey knows that Perry is guilty for killing the Clutters, however, like Capote, he also feels that his life has made him into the person he has become and that is not his fault. He understands the crime’s awful nature, however, it is difficult for him to make an assumption about Perry because he has also suffered. In an article from the Guardian by Ed Pilkington, he says that “Capote doesn't shrink from exploring the brutality of the killers, but he also forces us to consider their wounded humanity. In Perry, in particular, he captured an extraordinarily complex character, one capable of placing a pillow beneath Kenyon's head to make him more comfortable minutes before shooting him dead” (Pilkington). Capote introduces the idea of understanding and sympathizing with a cold blooded killer like Perry, to show that