The American Dream In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

In the early morning of November 15, 1959 four family members of the Clutter family were brutally murdered in the small town of Holcomb Kansas. Two men make an escape, fleeing across the country living what those two thought to be the dream. While on the run, a detective works tirelessly night and day to catch the despicable people who could commit such an atrocity. Truman Capote captures both realities, putting them together in a true crime story of convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hitchcock who run from the law and Al Dewey’s hunt for the killers. In his nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote reflects on the events of his turbulent and lonesome life, exposes his internal struggles with the murder mystery case, but also the search

In the novel, Mr. Clutter was described as a wealthy white man, “Always certain of what he wanted from the world, Mr. Clutter had in large measure obtained it” (Capote 7). According to Thomas Fahy, who wrote Understanding Truman Capote, “Capote’s writing captures the isolation, marginalization, and persecut of those who deviated from or failed to achieve white middle-class ideals and highlights the artificiality of mainstream idealizations about American culture” (Fahy). Both quotes show how Capote was able to create the idea of the Dream in which a white male was able to be wealthy and have a family but ultimately gets killed. Capote also wrote about how after the killers were ultimately executed families were still afraid to live the ideals of what was once thought as the American Dream in Kansas, “The dream of settling on his farm had not come true, for his wife’s fear of living in that sort of isolation had never lessened” (Capote 341). This can also be shown by a snippet in an article of the book, “The quiet rural community was shocked by the senseless killings of one of its most well-liked families,” (O’Reilly). Even after the conviction of the killers the fear was never lifted. People began to look at each other differently, changing what was once thought to be an ideal lifestyle of trusting one each other enough to leave doors unlocked. As a result, Capote’s writing reflects a “critical engagement” with the American culture that tests one to reevaluate the understanding of the 1940’s and 1950’s (Fahy). One main concept of the Dream, was when that when achieved, nothing else wrong would be able to happen. That once it was reached, life would be complete, but that was proved to be untrue. Causing people to reexamine what was believed for many years and contemplate how one moves about the future of