In Cold Blood: A Literary Analysis

A majority of the population has or will gain a bias towards or against a person, place, object, or concept, an example of one of these people is Truman Capote, a successful homosexual writer. He grew up as a openly feminine, gay man, who was neglected by his parent. As his father abandoned him for being different and his mother, an alcoholic, left him with relatives for many years. From this neglect he turned to writing. Wanting to create an interesting new book, he found a news clipping relating to the unsolved murder of the Clutter family. With his interest peaked, he left for Kansas to search for information to figure out the mystery. Using the information he gained from questioning the townspeople and even the murderers themselves, he

wrote the famous nineteen sixty-six "non-fictional" murder novel, In Cold Blood. In the novel, it's clearly shown that Truman favors the criminal Perry Smith, a charming sociopath, over Dick Hickock, an overbearing planner. He tries to cohere the reader into liking Smith to make it seem he was merely being used as a tool by his partner in crime; this is due to Capote relating his harsh life to Smith, Capote's relationship with Smith, or to make his story more interesting.
Throughout Capote's novel it is shown repeatedly that he favors Perry Smith in his writing. It is quite possible that he does this as he sees many parts of his life in Perry's childhood and life. Perry Smith had similar hardships in his childhood, as his mother was a promiscuous alcoholic, who was beaten by her husband until she took Perry and three siblings to San Francisco; where they lived until his mother committed suicide when he was thirteen. Later, two of his siblings also committed suicide and the surviving member stopped all contact with him. From there he and his siblings were sent to orphanages, in which he was supposedly abused by the nuns and overseer until he was taken by his father, never receiving a full proper education. Once hearing Smith's story, Capote started making connections to his own life and took pity on the man as he did not have an outlet like Capote had with writing. Capote could have ended up the same way as Perry if his life was slightly worse. Capote's pity on Perry caused him to write in a way to get the reader sympathize for Perry, as he is shown to have no ties to the world with the exception of his partner Hickock. This leaves Perry in a state of being used as a tool as he is desperate for someone in his life. The fact that Truman chose to flesh out Smith’s back story to this extent shows that he favors him over Hickock as Dick does not have a back story of his life to draw the reader into having any ‘real’ connection to him. While, this maybe so others would simply state that Truman did this as a way to give the story a main character and a person the reader can connect to. The argument that he did this to give the story a main character contradicts the purpose of this novel as it is supposed to be a non-fiction murder novel; a non-fiction novel is a novel based on facts with no bias, but this is not the case in this novel as Capote creates dialog and changes certain points of the novel that were completely false, such as the Clutters dialog and the time it took the police to actually come and the refusal to note that all four of the brutal murders was committed by Perry. Capote’s bond with Smith began with the similar beginnings and Capote is more than willing to use his writing to influence the minds of others to get them to see Perry under a similar light.
Capote’s favoritism to Perry is also due to his affectionate relationship with the confessed murderer. He describes Perry as a charming man who is capable to seduce a crowd of people, so it would be rather easy for Perry to seduce a single homosexual man such as Truman Capote. Capote is affection for Perry begins with Smith’s harsh childhood and his pity for Smith changes to a sort of crush or love as Capote succumbs to Perry’s looks and charm. This relationship grows as the years go by up to the execution of the sociopathic murderer; the men had spent many hours getting to know each other which formed a non-sexual relationship which quite possibly a one sided love. This relationship is further backed by Perry’s execution when he kisses Capote on the check and said goodbye and Perry’s one hundred page letter to Capote which was given to him after Smith’s death. Capote was quite affected by this relationship as he does his best to write Perry’s in a white light and tried to place the blame on the murder of the Clutter’s family as Hickock taking advantage of the poor dependent Smith. With this said there are people who would out right denied a relationship of this sort between Capote and Smith, one of which is Truman Capote himself. Even if a sexual relationship between the two men was non-existent there is no denying that whatever relationship occurred between the two it did have an effect on how Capote wrote the “non-fiction” novel.
Capote’s attempt of writing a factual non-fiction murder novel is not how the novel, In Cold Blood, turn out to be as once more a non-fiction story is based on unbiased fact and a fictional story is nearly completely made up and this novel uses facts and fiction throughout it.

Although Capote claims that he used only facts in this novel what he writes often goes against the crime reports and writes with a biased towards Smith; this goes directly against what a non-fiction story making this murder mystery novel more of a historical fiction piece. This is due to Capote writing about the historic murder mystery of the all American Clutter family, though the novel is based on accounts of what happened to the clutters he does insert dialog that never occurred, an extreme bias to Perry Smith to make the confirmed murderer a passive lonely man who is merely a tool to a more dominated man, Dick Hickock, and creates scenes that completely contradict the written police reports. So Capote uses various false occurrences to make his creation a hit novel among the population as he claims the “non-fiction” murder novel his creation. With this said there are people who would claim that he did write mostly the truth according to his many sources with the exception of the Clutter’s dialog. Even if the novel was written purely on the resources he had he would of still have access to the police reports and he had years to speak with the two criminals, but he still wrote false realties and a bias to the sociopath

murderer.
Much like many others Truman Capote has been taken over by a bias views on people and does what he can to bring others to his views on a certain sociopath he clearly favors. In Truman Capote’s creation, In Cold Blood, is an attempt to put the serial killer Perry Smith in a good light by putting the reader through a long wind backstory on Perry’s life to make the readers feel sorry for the unstable man. This is followed up by the influence of his relationship with Perry Smith which further brought Capote under the belief that Perry needs to be judged more lightly on his crimes. Due to Capote’s views on Perry he compromises his desire to write a purely factual but entertaining murder mystery novel.