In the book In Cold Blood by Truman Capote he writes about the Clutter family, how they were brutally murdered and the jury process of the criminals. The parents Herb and Bonnie and teens Kenyon and Nancy, are a happy, prosperous, church-going family living on their farm in Holcomb, Kansas. The narrator follows the Clutters through the ordinary events of their last day on earth. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, the killers, slaughter them late that night after not finding a same that was filled with money. Perry and Dick flee after the murders and make it to Mexico. Kansas authority Alvin Dewey and his four special agents lead the manhunt for the killer or killers. They 're eventually led to Perry and Dick by Floyd Wells, an inmate serving time …show more content…
Truman makes the readers feel sympathetic regarding Perry situation. He displays how Perry is more of a victim for having abusive adults in his life and sibling suicides. Perry’s childhood was an incredibly rough one. His parents were divorced, his mother became an alcoholic and paid little attention to her children, he was eventually taken in by his father after being in orphanages for a while, he was taken out of school and traveled around with his father and was isolated from people his age with who he could become friends with and learn actual social skills. Perry elaborates on one of his experiences as a child when he says, “I was severely beaten by the cottage mistress, who had called me names and made fun of me in front of all the boys” (pg. 275). Truman shows empathy toward Perry because of the similarities in both of their childhoods. This shows some of the immense psychological damage that was done to him as a kid that later impacted his overall character as an adult and contributed to him eventually killing the Clutter …show more content…
He is quick to sense slight or insult in things others say” (pg. 297). The way Mr. Clutter’s murder happened maybe Perry saw his father or the people in his life that had hurt him physically and mentally and why his murder was the most extreme. In some sense, the rivalry between Dick and Perry is a mutual struggle for self-recognition, with each wishing the other man would validate his own self-image. This shows that Perry wants to impress Dick and that he is capable of doing things on his own. By the end of the book, however, we become aware of some of Dick’s own insecurities: his failure to achieve financial security and support his first wife, Carol, and their three children, his sexual interest in young girls, both of which he compensates for with bravado and reckless criminal actions. Though Dick didn’t kill any of the Clutter family Dick was the one who constructed the whole idea of going to the Clutter home and robbing them and taking advantage of Nancy. Dick also manages to pry on the fact that he is too a murderer. Which is to say that the background can affect the way a person acts but can be defined in how they intake the hardships either learn from it or continue the
Family plays a big role in most stories. In Cold Blood is no different, in the story family is able to shape the outcome of the characters in their younger years that will affect them later in life and the decisions that they will make. This will be shown by the Clutter family, Perry’s family, and dicks family, and the outcomes that this had on them.
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...
Capote's structure in In Cold Blood is a subject that deserves discussion. The book is told from two alternating perspectives, that of the Clutter family who are the victims, and that of the two murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. The different perspectives allow the reader to relive both sides of the story; Capote presents them without bias. Capote masterfully utilizes the third person omniscient point of view to express the two perspectives. The non-chronological sequencing of some events emphasizes key scenes.
The Criminals have sort of cult of personality. Perry a high school dropout and a loner while Dick has children and been married twice. The entire story Perry seems to appeal towards the readers emotions since he has no family. Capote is partially biased towards Smith because at friends. Truman Capote gives the reader a detailed chronicle of Perry Smith's and Dick Hickock's childhoods. Smith's childhood was problematic from years of abuse. Perry witnessed his father abusing his mother; as a result, his parents divorced. His adulthood rendered him the chance to avenge the ...
...ds the tree…And Jesus, I don’t know how to fight a snake.” Capote’s use of the metaphor comparing Perry to the tree. The dream clearly represents Perry’s struggle in life and how he wants to reach his goals, but finds it difficult to do so. Also, the imagery when describing the tree is magnificent. “It’s beautiful to look at—it has blue leaves and diamonds hanging everywhere. Diamonds like oranges.” The imagery combines with the metaphor that Perry wants to reach the diamonds, but is unable to because of something stopping him. In the passage, Perry also talks about another dream about a bird saving him from being beaten. “A warrior-angel who blinded the nuns with its beak, fed upon their eyes, slaughtered them as they ‘pleaded for mercy…’” This gruesome diction shows how what Perry was thinking on the inside. It reveals the crazy part of him. The psychopathic part.
In 1966, Truman Capote published the novel In Cold Blood that pierced the boundaries of literary genres, as he narrated the events of the 1959 Clutter family massacre in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas and the quest that took place afterwards through the perspectives both the murderers and those looking for them. As Capote bends these genre normalities, he ventures with the killers and the detectives and describes the murderers’ lives in-depth to further characterize Dick Hickock and Perry Smith--their psychological states and the possible contributing factors to their undeniable personality disorders. The two killers are ultimately diagnosed by a mental health professional with mental illnesses rather than chronic personality disorders,
Truman Capote finds different ways to humanize the killers throughout his novel In Cold Blood. He begins this novel by explaining the town of Holcomb and the Clutter family. He makes them an honest, loving, wholesome family that play a central role in the town. They play a prominent role in everyone’s lives to create better well-being and opportunity. Capote ends his beginning explanation of the plot by saying, “The suffering. The horror. They were dead. A whole family. Gentle, kindly people, people I knew --- murdered. You had to believe it, because it was really true” (Capote 66). Despite their kindness to the town, someone had the mental drive to murder them. Only a monster could do such a thing --- a mindless beast. However,
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 ...
In Cold Blood is a true account of a multiple murder case that took place in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, written by Truman Capote. Capote’s attention to detail causes the reader to gain an extreme interest in the Clutter family even though they were an ordinary family. The suspense that is a result of minimal facts and descriptive settings was an elaborate stylistic technique that gave effective results throughout the book. His ability to make this account of a horrid crime more than just a newspaper description was a great success as a base of his many literary devices, not just is great focus to small details.
Being defined by nature or nurture. Isn't enough to make finally decisions about one person. But for some it just might be. Perry Smith had an abusive past. It seems to still haunt him when he looks back on it. But that justify his crimes in anyway. Perry seems to have handles himself very well about the past ,but that isn't enough. Perry Smith on the night of November 15, 1959 was at a point where he made a choice that would affect him for the rest of his life. Perry deep down believes Mr. Clutter is a nice gentlemen and even says so. Yet his actions were done out of the natural nature to him. He then ends up cutting his throat, followed by shooting the rest of his family brutally. In this case, it clearly shows Perry smith as someone who takes up in the naturally
Through the course of the book, Capote uses vivid descriptions to his advantage in order to place emphasis on more noteworthy parts of the story. Capote’s choice of imagery characterizes Perry as a person and gives an idea to who he is. Perry’s life prior to crime was normal for awhile, until his family situation crumbled: “in the ring, a lean Cherokee girl rode a wild horse, a ‘bucking bronc,’ and her loosened hair whipped back and forth, flew about like a flamenco dancer’s. Her name was Flo Buckskin, and she was a professional rodeo performer, a ‘champion bronc-rider.’ So was her husband, Tex John Smith; it was while touring the Western rodeo circuit that the handsome Indian girl and the homely-handsome Irish cowboy had met, married, and had the four children sitting in the grandstand. (And Perry could remember many another rodeo spectacle--see again his father skipping inside a circle of spinning lassos, or his mother, with silver and turquoise bangles jangling on her wrists, trick-riding at a desperado speed that thrilled her youngest child and caused crowds in towns from Texas to Oregon to ‘stand up and clap.’)” Perry’s troubles after his parents separation may very well have contributed to his becoming a murderer later on down the road. The abrupt change in his life at such a young age, clearly had a lasting impact on him and his lifestyle. His past altered the way he thought and the type of person he was. Capote quotes,
Perry was born on October 27th, 1928 to two rodeo performers who would later separate when he was still a child. Perry would be raised by his mother who would battle with an addiction with alcohol his entire childhood. Before Perry could reach the age of adulthood his mother would die leaving him in the hands of a Catholic Orphanage. Where Perry was constantly abused both physical and emotional for wetting his bed, while would become a lifelong problem. In his teens Perry would go to live with his itinerant father. Within these years two of Perry’s sibling would end up killing themselves while his only living sibling would cut off all contact with Perry.
He is the character that most sympathized with because of his past. He never had a connection with his alcoholic mother and siblings. His parents never gave him the love, direction, and the moral values that children need from their parents. This contributed to his behavior. While Perry was testifying, Dr. Jones characterized him with severe mental illness. He mentions that Perry has “paranoid orientation toward the world,” (Capote 297). He goes into further detail by mentioning that Perry “is suspicious and distrustful towards others, tends to feel that others discriminate against him, and feels that others are unfair to him and do not understand him,” (Capote 297). It is completely understandable why Perry would think like this. He was treated horrendously by the nuns in the orphanage and when he lived with his family. Since Perry never had anything good happen to him growing up, he feels like he has to take out his frustration on people who are good. Vengeance for what he did not receive. While in court, Perry mentions why he killed the Clutter family, “It wasn’t because of anything the Clutters did. They never hurt me. Like other people. Like people all my life. Maybe it’s just that the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it,” (Capote 290). Dr. Jones diagnosis Perry as a paranoid
Perry Smith was a short man with a large torso. At first glance, “he seemed a more normal-sized man, a powerful man, with the shoulders, the arms, the thick, crouching torso of a weight lifter. [However] when he stood up he was no taller than a twelve-year old child” (15). What Smith lacked in stature, he made up in knowledge. Perry was “a dictionary buff, a devotee of obscure words” (22). As an adolescent, he craved literature and loved to gain insight of the imaginary worlds he escaped into, for Perry’s reality was nothing less than a living nightmare. “His mother [was] an alcoholic [and] had strangled to death on her own vomit” (110). Smith had two sisters and an older brother. His sister Fern had committed suicide by jumping out of a window and his brother Jimmy followed Fern’s suit and committed suicide the day after his wife had killed herself. Perry’s sister, Barbara, was the only normal one and had made a good life for herself. These traumatic events left Perry mentally unstable and ultimately landed him in jail, where he came into acquaintance with Dick Hickock, who was in jail for passing bad checks. Dick and Perry became friends and this new friendship changed the course of their lives forever. Hickock immediately made note of Perry’s odd personality and stated that there was “something wrong with Little Perry. Perry could be such a kid, always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep. And often [Dick] had seen him sit for hours just sucking his thumb. In some ways old Perry was spooky as hell. Take, for instance, that temper of his of his. He could slide into a fury quicker than ten drunk Indians. And yet you wouldn’t know it. He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at it or listen to it” (108). Perry’s short fuse and dysfunctional background were the two pieces to Perry’s corrupt life puzzle that soured and tainted the final “picture”.
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