Through the Eyes of the Insiders In the novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the author displays how the lives of the people who live in Holocomb are severely contrast than the lives of Dick and Perry. Capote has a way of letting the readers know by his text who is telling their story from their view, whether its insiders from Holocomb, including its citizens and law enforcement or Dick and Perry or their parents or relatives. It is obvious to realize who is telling their story by who they say they are and the way they speak. The people of Holocomb tend to speak in a way that is of concern and question and unknowingly hostile towards Dick and Perry. Dick and Perry on the other hand, talk more about their need to escape and their childhood. …show more content…
Days before they committed the murder, Dick and Perry met up and Dick made the choice of going into the Clutters’ household, invading their safe to get money and killing the Clutters. Many months later, the two men are caught in Las Vegas, put in jail for interrogation, brought back to Kansas for their verdict and then to finally be executed. While being brought back to Kansas, Perry shared with officer Duntz and Dewey what happened on the night of November 15, saying that “ He [Dick] was holding...knife to Dick” (Capote 244). This quote goes in depth of who and how the killing of the Clutter family really happened. In other words, Perry did the killing while Dick’s main goal was to question the Clutters about where the safe was, get the money and watch Perry kill the Clutters. Even though Dick said that he planned to kill the Clutters himself, he only wanted to rob them because he had heard of the safe that Floyd Wells had told him about and was thinking that killing the Clutters would only be an option if they were too stubborn to tell him the location of the safe. Dick may have watched Perry kill the Clutters but Dick never stopped him from doing so, making it seem like it was all Perry’s doing. The reason for Perry putting in the effort to kill the Clutters could be because he felt pressured due to the lie that Perry told him about killing a black man,
Dick never wanted to discuss the murders. He always wanted to change the subject. Floyd Wells, his former cellmate, mentioned to Dick that he was a former employee of the Clutters, and they had a safe on the property, unaware that they never had any cash on them. When he did not find the safe or any money, Dick resorted to killing the whole Clutter family. Dick became a little too confident and thought he could get away with murder.
Perry Smith and Dick Hickock are wanted for murder, robbery, and fraud. These two murdered the Clutter family in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas at the families providence. They had thought it would be a adequate family to steal money from. When they were unable to find the money they were looking for the decided to kill them in anger and left most of the family dead. They were motivated to do so because they wanted revenge on everybody who had treated them poorly in their young and adult lives.
Although Dick’s was fully aware of his actions, he even came up with the plan to go and try to steal from the Clutters, another important evidence that separates Perry and Dick is also overlooked by the court. Alvin Dewey states Perry, before signing the confession paper, “admit that Hickock had been telling the truth, and that it was he, Perry Smith, who had shot and killed the whole family” (255). It is revealed that Perry is the one who killed the members of the Clutter family and Dick did not. The court gives Dick the same death sentence that they gave Perry, the guy who actually did the killing. Although Dick is too some extent responsible for what happened to the Clutter and he was aware of his actions and what was happening, his punishment
Being the smart criminal he is, Dick used his own name to sign the checks. They are caught and arrested by police in Las Vegas. A confession gives the reader a gory description of the vicious murder of the Clutter family. They were tried and convicted of murder after 40 minutes of jury discussion and were sent to Death Row. The story includes lots of flashbacks from Perry Smith’s sad and depressing childhood including alcoholism, sibling suicide, parental abuse and not being allowed to go to school.
Instead of breaking a few things in the house or yelling and screaming, out of frustration, he and Dick kill the family! They were so angry and full of rage when they realized there was no safe full of money. So why not just get out of there and find another person or place to rob? It seems to me there was so much adrenaline between the two of them that they took their anger out on the family.
While this novel has kept me interested, even though I am not normally intrigued by factual prose, I was very disappointed to learn the motive behind the Clutter murders. I was hoping for a strange and twisted connection where Herb is not the perfect family man that he seems to be, however, I did not get was I was a hoping for. There is no connection between Dick and Perry and the Clutter family. There is no motive behind killing them, only that Dick wanted to. I am still wondering why Dick became so obsessed with a family that he did not even know.
In Capote’s In Cold Blood the readers see Perry fall to Dick’s murder tendencies even though he knows it's wrong. Perry follows the order of Dick to kill Mr. Clutter even though Perry didn't want to kill anyone. “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman.
For the case of Perry, that would have been the motorcycle incident and for Dick, the automobile accident. Rather than having been deferred by family or their own impulses, a physical scan of their cranial functions could serve as a reasoning behind their similar situations. Another unlikely yet probable theory is that with both their characteristics aiding to each other’s inner Id, they created their similar situation. With Dick’s planning and ability to talk and Perry’s ruthlessness, their forces allowed them to carry out the murder cleanly. It is also possible that their similar situations were very possible, Perry could have met Willie Jay instead and not work with Dick, one of them could have shot the other throughout their trip, or they could have never went back to Kansas and provoked the police to heighten their case.
Dick led in the killings. Perry would ask what to do and how to do it. He felt no remorse about what he had done. When they were interrogated he laughed and thought it was funny. He was a smart elec about it.
Dewey could not accept the theory that the family had been slaughtered for paltry profit -’a few dollars and a radio’”(Capote103). Dick and Perry initially get away with murder, but their clues that were left behind eventually catch up to them. In many parts
In the book, “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote takes us through the lives of the murderers and the murdered in the 1959 Clutter family homicide, which transpires in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. The first chapter, “The Last to See Them Alive,” vividly illustrates the daily activities of the Clutter family—Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon—and the scheming plot of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith up to point where the family is found tied up, and brutally murdered. In doing so, he depicts the picture-perfect town of Holcomb with “blue skies and desert clear air”(3) whose safety is threatened when “four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives”(5). Through the eyes of a picture perfect family and criminals with social aspirations, Capote describes the American Dream and introduces his audience to the idea that this ideal was no more than an illusion. Herbert Clutter: the character Capote describes as the epitome of the American Dream.
Although he ended up being one of the murderers of the Clutter family, the readers often felt sorry for him. In the beginning of the novel the reader finds out that Perry was actually very nervous about committing the crime, he and Dick were on the road to do. Capote made it seem like Perry
Nature versus nurture is one of the most controversial debates in contemporary psychology. The debate concerning whether or not humans are born with the preset characteristics that will shape lives for years to come or whether actions are a result of the events and the environment that pave the way for our behavioral characteristics. Capote’s “In Cold Blood” gives the audience a detailed look into the upbringing of the character Perry Smith, creating a sympathetic outlook towards his past and attempting to bring a sense of understanding as to how a seemingly harmless young man could brutally murder four innocent people. In the case of Perry Smith, nurture was the cause of his actions in regards to the Clutter family murders.
Truman Capote’s novel, In Cold Blood epitomizes the shifting sentiments related to the murder of the Clutter family which range from terror, to sorrow, to pride, and all mixed emotions in between. Yet through Capote’s particular descriptions about each character, the connection between their feelings and their actions become further clarified. In effect, the readers experience feelings of sympathy for the victims, their friends and family, the investigators, and even the brutal murders of the innocent family. In order to craft this association, Capote employs a pathos appeal to amplify the audience’s ability to sympathize with each and every character.
He is portrayed as a mastermind in the cold-blooded killing of the Clutters family, a man with little respect for the lives of others, which can be seen through Dick’s expression before the murder of the Clutters when he converses Perry, “We’re gonna go in there and splatter those walls with hair” (Capote 234). This sudden tone shift enables Capote to depict Dick as a cruel and immoral character. Dick’s lack of empathy and concern for other people beside himself allow him to commit crimes without remorse, which is in contrast to Perry’s moral contemplation after each bad actions they committed. Moreover, Dick is represented as the true criminal with evident motives in murdering the Clutters, while Perry is seen as a vulnerable victim who depends on Dick for validation and acceptance, something in which Dick happily provides in order to manipulate Perry, as Capote writes, “Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, ‘a natural born killer,’—absolutely sane but conscienceless, and capable of dealing with or without motive, the coldest-blooded deathblows. It was Dick's theory that such a gift could, under his supervision, be profitably exploited” (Capote 205).