Mental Illness In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood tells the true story of the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959, where Truman Capote focuses in on the two killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. He manages to capture both killers as a whole people rather than a one sided killers, but provokes pity for Smith while describing Hickock as selfish and sick Throughout the novel, the reader is completely aware of the fact that Smith is a murderer, yet sympathy and confusion are evoked through recounts of his abusive childhood and the question of mental illness. Perry Smith plays a pivotal role in In Cold Blood as a morally ambiguous character, demonstrating Capote’s bias towards Smith.

Perry’s abusive upbringing and possible mental illness add to the pity

the reader feels for him. As a child, smith’s parents divorced, and his mother who got full custody was a heavy alcoholic and eventually sent little Perry to a Catholic orphanage. Here, were the nuns were very abusive, and “always at him. Hitting him” (132). After leaving the orphanage he went to the salvation army where he is greeted with more abuse, where a particularly malevolent caretaker would “fill a tub with ice cold water”, put him in it, and hold him under until he “was blue”. His mother died from choking on her own vomit when he was 13, and two of his siblings committed suicide as young adults. Obviously from a broken family, Capote’s recount of Smith’s childhood causes the reader to somehow have sympathy for a killer . Similarly, his probable mental illness further classifies him as morally ambiguous. Accounts from a psychiatrist who has spent countless hours interviewing Perry have been added to the book. While speaking of the effects his childhood had, the doctor mentioned that “For the most part, his rages in the past have been directed at authority figures - father, brother, army sergeant - and have led to violent assaultive behaviour on several occasions” (334). In addition, the doctor also established that Perry's state of mind at the time of the murder was unstable. He states that "when Smith attacked Mr. Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside a schizophrenic darkness"(338).
Although Perry carried out the brutal Clutter murders, he appears to be the more moral of the two men. He is gentle and seems to want love and acceptance, but is eventually uncovered to be more brutal than his counterpart, Dick. Throughout the book, Perry is seen carrying out arguably honorable acts, such as preventing Dick from raping Nancy. In spite of this, he still carries out the brutal murders of the Clutter family despite appearing to not want to kill anybody. Capote presents Dick as the mastermind behind the crime, by planting the idea into Perry’s head with full knowledge that Perry has deep running violent and antisocial tendencies, and would lose touch with reality in the moment. Capote’s bias toward Perry is shown in this depiction. After the murders, Perry feels uneasy and tries to understand what he did and why. To show, he tells Dick that “something must be wrong with” them, but Dick replies he is “a normal” and doesn’t want to think or speak of what has happened. This indicates that Perry doesn’t fully comprehend what he has done yet still feels bothered by it, while Dick fully understands and accepts the murders.
In conclusion, Capote repeatedly displays Perry as the more moral of the two murderers, and causes readers to take into account the connection between his childhood, his mental illness, and his behavior. The moral ambiguity shown by Perry adds an element of sympathy to the novel and makes the reader see him as a human rather than one-sided, as well as unease as the reader wonders how they could possibly feel pity for a cold blooded killer. All in all, Perry illustrates how there’s no fine line between evil and good.