Truman Capote

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INTRODUCTION:
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Neglect and painful insecurity tainted both Truman Capote and Perry Smith’s childhoods, resulting in common fears and experiences that Capote translates in his writing of In Cold Blood. Truman Capote lacked a stable childhood upbringing, internalizing a fear of abandonment, which he echoes through Perry Smith. Capote demonstrates an intense emotional attachment with one of the killers, Smith. Throughout the five years in which Capote worked on his project, he thoroughly examined Smith and ultimately befriended him because Smith’s troubled childhood that resembled his own. Capote’s parents, Lillie Mae and Arch, divorced at a young age, leaving Capote in the care of others, and as a result, he spent much of his childhood in Monroeville, Alabama (Truman Capote about the Author). This abandonment by his parents haunted Capote and allowed others to harass him for his effeminate ways. Although he found comfort in his lifelong friend Harper Lee, his relatives and friends in Alabama failed Capote by not providing the love and understanding of a mother and father (Truman Capote Biography). Smith’s youth, although more severe, paralleled Capote’s. In Smith’s childhood, “there was evidence of severe emotional deprivation…This deprivation may have involved prolonged or recurrent absence of one or both parents, a chaotic family life in which the parents were unknown, or an outright rejection of the child by one or both parents with the child being raised by others'" (Capote 191). Smith’s abandonment was due to his mother who “turned out to be a disgraceful drunkard” (Capote 78), and his father who deserted Smith after his separation. Because of his parents’ neglect, orphanages became the primary caretake...

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...eed,’ and while most of his subjects said gosh or gee whiz, one student replied, ‘I think they ought to be locked in the same cell for the rest of their lives. Never allowed any visitors. Just sit there staring at each other till the day they die.’ And a tough, strutty little man said, ‘I believe in capital punishment. It's like the Bible says - an eye for an eye. And even so we're two pair short!’" (Capote 159). Throughout Capote’s writing, he emphasizes the flaws in society’s thought process of execution. Society uses capital punishment as an elaborate ruse to justify revenge and gain that revenge by murdering, as well. Capital punishment is the most irreparable crime governments commit without consequence. “The death penalty is not an act of self-defense against an immediate threat to life. It is the premeditated killing of a prisoner” (Amnesty International).

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