The Role Of Identity In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

At birth, every person is given a name, a birth certificate and a social security number. However, labels and documents do not identify who one is or who he will be. Family, environment, and circumstances shape an individual. At any one point in time, an individual may have one identity but at another given point, they may have another. What causes one’s identity to change? At birth, identity begins to form, shaping an individual; and while personal choice slightly influences a person’s identity, environmental factors weigh most heavily in molding a person’s permanent identity. Sports play a large part of an athletic student’s life, weighing heavily on one’s identity. In his essay, “Cut”, Bob Greene relays how he and several others are cut from their middle school sports team because “[they weren’t] good enough” (Greene 58). Because of this cut, Greene and his peers end up pushing harder than ever in other areas of their life. He notes, “an inordinately large proportion of successful men share… the memory

In Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, he chronicles two criminals, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, who slaughtered an entire family, but were they always those people? Surely, they did not come into this world with the identities of murderers. Perry experienced a tumultuous childhood -including both an emotionally and physically abusive father-, served in the Merchant Marines and the army, and sustained crippling injuries to his legs that left him addicted to aspirin. Not surprisingly, he turned to theft, his own choice, which put him in jail, where he met Dick and ultimately changed his identity to that of a murderer. What would have happened had Perry not experienced these events in his life? He would have turned out completely different, he would have never met Dick and never become a murderer. Had his identity never changed to that of a murderer, he would not have been