Book Information:
Author : Capote, Truman
Title : In Cold Blood
Publisher : Random House
Original Publication Date : 1965
Book Outline:
In a small town in Kansas a family of four were murdered for no apparent reason.
The murderers ran for a few years and finally they were caught, tried, and
accused for murder. In 1965 they were hung for the crime.
In the story a family was killed for no reason. This well respected farming
family had no enemies, and no quarrels. Although they were wealthy, Mr. Clutter
never kept cash in the house. The whole region and eventually the country was
shocked by the randomness and brutality of the act, in much the same way it was
by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The two men in which didn't even know the
Clutter family went into their house and shot all four of them.
There were two main characters. Dick is the first one that I will talk about.
Dick was 33 years old and he did not have the best character. Dick was one who
helped participate in the killing of the Clutter family. I didn't like him from
the very beginning. He struck me as the type that is your friend one minute and
enemy the next. Perry is the other charecter that I will talk about. Perry
wasn't as bad as Dick but yet he still struck me as having a bad character for
what he did to the family. It took me awhile to get a good impression of Perry.
Perry was a really nice guy and I think that he just got mixed in with the wrong
crowd. At the beginning, when they first started to kill all of the family
members, they had them tied up and Perry didn't want to kill the family but he
thought that if he acted like he was gonna kill Mr. Clutter then Dick would stop
him. Then they would let them all go but when Dick didn't stop him Perry became
a mad man and went ahead and killed the whole family. Later at the gallows Perry
started to have second thoughts a little to late so he tried to starve himself
but didn't succeed. He was finally hung, during the hanging period he apologized
to everyone for what he did.
"This is it, this is it, this had to be it, there's the school, there's
the garage, now we turn south." To Perry, it seemed as though Dick was muttering
jubilant mumbo-jumbo. They left the highway, sped through a deserted Holcomb,
and crossed the Santa Fe tracks.
... the only difference is that he chooses to pull the trigger of a loaded gun. No one can dispute that Perry’s mother and father’s alcoholism and abuse are direct causes to his run-ins with the law.
During his childhood, Perry experienced and was marked by brutality and lack of concern on the part of both parents (Capote 296). Dr. Jones gives a very detailed description of Perry's behavior. He says that Perry, who grew up without love, direction, or m...
book, and by the end of the book we feel like we know exactly how Perry feels, and we have a understanding of some of the hardships that the soldiers faced in Vietnam. In this book, Perry kills
By structuring his novel where time is out of joint, Dick is able to illustrate that one’s perception of reality is entirely based on what one believes to be fact. This point is illustrated through Ragle Gumm, who, “from his years of active military life” in the beginning of the story, “prided himself on his physical agility” (Dick 100). It is not until time is mended again toward the end of the book that he realizes that it had been, in fact, his father that had served in the war. This demonstrates how one’s firm belief can turn into a reality, as it did for Ragle Gumm for the two and a half years he lived in the fabricated city of Old Town.
The whole “robbery” was planned by Dick, the drive was planned by Dick, and even the cover up process was his idea. Although he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, Dick is equally responsible for the Clutter family murder as Perry. It would take a horrible person to murder a family, but it takes a vial beast to plan, examine, organize, and operate the murder. Dick grew up with loving parents who were no poorer than any other family in the neighborhood. According to both him and his parents, he was a good kid who did well in school and lettered in nine sports. Similar to Perry, he feels cheated in life and is willing to do anything he must to get what he deserves. Along with this, he has zero insight on how to life a normal life. Dick is the type of person to act on his impulses. He 's likes to have a good time and live in the moment. His aspirations are easy money and easy women. With this, he seems to have no ability to weigh the consequences of his actions, and he will do whatever it takes to get his way. This type of momentary reaction is prone to lead a life of “poor decision.” If he’s in need of money, he will write a few bad checks or maybe steal from a store. If this jig wasn’t plentiful enough, he hitches a ride with a stranger to basically rob and kill everyone in the car. Dick was known for being a terrible person as one man stated, “Dick Hickock! Don 't talk to me about
The usage of media is huge in nowadays. People rely on different kinds of media to receive information in their everyday life because they are thirsty for the diverse and informative content. However, inaccurate portrayals of people from different races always appear in the media and audience will exaggerate those portrayals by their inflexible beliefs and expectations about the characteristics or behaviors of the portrayals’ cultural groups without considering individual variation (Ting-Toomey and Chung, 2012); in fact, it is also called as stereotypes. According to a study by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University (Stein, 2012), racial stereotyping continues to occur in media and the mainstream media's coverage of different cultural groups is full of biased reporting, offensive terminology and old stereotypes of American society. It specifically emphasizes that majority of the stereotyped characters in media will only bring out the dark side of their cultural groups which many of them might not be true, especially for the portrayals of black community: African American.
Perry Smith did not live the happy childhood that he deserved, abandoned by his family at a young age he was forced to live at a terrible orphanage. “The one where Black Widows were always at me. Hitting me. Because of wetting the bed...They hated me, too.” (Capote 132). In this specific orphanage, Perry was beaten by the nuns that own the place. The short sentences within this quote truly emphasize the dramatic and horrible conditions that Perry had to live with in the orphanage. Sympathy is created ...
...y reasons why this could have occurred, the most probable one is that Spielberg needed to lengthen Dick’s short story and alter it slightly in order to make it more lengthy and meaningful to his target early 21st Century audience. Lastly, I personally preferred the original version of the story after seeing the film; however, after being given the chance to actually listen to Spielberg’s reasoning behind some of the things he did in his version of the story, the movie adaptation became more intriguing and meaningful to me than it had previously been.
Moreover, the effects of the murder on Dick and Perry are more remarkable as each person
In Dick’s case, the reader can safely assume that he plays the “man” role in the relationship with Perry. Dick is considered the traditional masculine figure, “Dick was very literal-minded, very—he had no understanding of music, poetry,” (p.18). Dick represents the famous American macho figure with “his literalness” and “ his pragmatic approach to every subject” . He does not need to know music or poetry but he possesses the masculine and benevolent essence that makes people respect and even trust him completely. That is the reason why Perry is greatly
Dick had a good life going, he just didn't feel like it went the way he wanted it too. He was popular, smart, an athlete just wasn't enough for him. On the other hand, Perry had a bad life. He was between foster homes, and even had his siblings and father commit suicide while his mother drank herself away. Putting all that together i learned that, Nurture plays the biggest role in life. It has the ability to determine weather you turn a good life into and complete wreak such as Dick Hickock had. In a way it also applies to Perry considering his life was a wreck all the way
When first describing Dick and Perry, Capote describes dick as “an athlete constructed on a welterweight scale. The tattooed face of a cat, blue and grinning, covered his right hand…More markings…ornamented his arms and torso.” The metaphor comparing Dick to a welterweight athlete gives the perception that Dick is a mean looking guy. Basically, what a stereotypical criminal looks like; and that is exactly what Dick is. At the end of the passage, after describing Dick’s car colli...
Admitting to only befriending Perry because “he had beaten a colored man to death” (Capote 109) is evidence of the perverted mind of Dick, which discredits any notion of having good intentions behind any of his actions. Capote included this confession because if his judgment of character is based solely off of the ability to commit heinous crimes then there is not a whole lot of good light being shed upon his own character. Furthermore, Dick goes on to attack Perry in his mind thinking there’s “something wrong with Little Perry” (108). Since Capote has already attempted to establish a general liking and sympathy towards Perry, he hopes the reader will be close-minded towards Dick and dislike him more for being so rude.
He grew up in a different environment with a broken family with no apparent dreams. As a young boy his parents separated and he was forced to go with his mother. He later ran away to be with his father who turned him down and ended up being abandoned by his family completely. He then came to stay at a catholic orphanage, where he was abused by nuns and caregivers. His father finally decided to take him into his care and together they got away and traveled, ending his education before passing the third grade which bothered him as he became older. Perry joined the marines and army, then came back to relocate his father. Him and his father had a breakthrough over starvation, leaving Perry with no one else to turn to and therefore getting involved in committing crimes. Once he got caught and jailed, his mother had died and his brother and sister had both committed suicide. By all his experiences we can say Perry definitely lived a different life and his family portrayal was very different from the Clutters. After so much abandonment and abuse, we can understand why he almost feels nothing and how growing up has affected him. The American Dream for Perry might not have been a “perfect family” but may have been to find something with order, and control. The dream Perry’s family would be focused on is reaching a decent life as their past has been
Hoberek, Andrew P. "The 'work' of science fiction: Philip K. Dick and Occupational masculinity in the post-world war II United States." MFS Modern Fiction Studies. Summer 1997.