Passage Analysis In Cold Blood

The main purpose of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is to offer insight into the minds of the murderers of the Clutter family, Dick and Perry. However, asking an audience to be open-minded about men who have committed such heinous crimes is no easy task. Capote instead methodically and rather artfully combines imagery, parallel structure, and perspective in two separate passages found between pages 107-113 to contribute to his characterization of Perry and Dick where the former is deserving of sympathy and the latter, disgust.
In order to draw in the attention of his audience, Capote begins each passage the same way with the sentences, “Mountains. Hawks wheeling in a white sky” (107, 110). The repetition is a sign of the significance of

the passages, because even though Capote does not directly point out how important they are he is trying to catch the eye of the reader so they can pay close attention to detail rather than read the surface meaning of the words. Capote wants the reader to dig deeper and read between the lines to gain further insight into the personalities and characters of Perry and Dick. Capote has sympathized with Perry from the start and subtly manipulates his audience into the same mindset evoking a sense of pity relaying Perry’s hardships in life and later guilt if there is a lack of understanding behind his motives for murder.
In the second passage, from the point-of-view of Perry, Capote chooses to exclude unpleasant diction describing the setting found in the first passage from Dick’s point-of-view. He intentionally did not include them because he wants to avoid the affiliation with such descriptions of Perry, instead replacing them with Perry’s personal anecdotes about his family life. Capote mentions Perry’s mother as, “an alcoholic [who] strangled to death on her own vomit” (Capote 110). A mother is supposed to be the one person who is guaranteed to offer unconditional love. “Mother” is a word that, for the most part, triggers images and memories of nurturing and support, but by labeling her as an out of control addict, Capote wants the reader to pity Perry for the lack of love he has experienced in his life. Nowhere in the first passage, does Capote provide insight into the past of Dick. He does not include any possibility for sympathizing with Dick, which acts as a characterization in itself. If the reader does not have any information about any hardships Dick may have faced in life, the very exclusion of such details is supposed to guide the thoughts of the audience to give every ounce of understanding and sympathy to Perry instead.
The difference in imagery included in each passage was done with purpose. The first passage contains descriptions of the setting where Dick and Perry have stopped to picnic at a “dusty road” and a “dusty village” (Capote 108) painting a very dry and bland picture. Because the passage is from Dick’s perspective, it only makes sense that Capote would use unpleasant words to describe everything because Capote’s tone towards Dick has been one of disdain throughout the novel. By associating Dick’s mindset with undesirable word choice, Capote hopes the reader correlates the negativity to him as well. Dick is negative and therefore unlikable, which heavily contrasts with Perry. Even the details about the “oily tortilla” (Capote 108) are included in an attempt to imagine Dick disgustingly eating a tortilla dripping with grease. If the reader is disgusted by Dick, Capote hopes they will then be more judgmental of him, therefore being less likely to be understanding of his murderous predilections.
He also includes Dick’s thoughts of Perry that prove to not be respectable or decent.

Admitting to only befriending Perry because “he had beaten a colored man to death” (Capote 109) is evidence of the perverted mind of Dick, which discredits any notion of having good intentions behind any of his actions. Capote included this confession because if his judgment of character is based solely off of the ability to commit heinous crimes then there is not a whole lot of good light being shed upon his own character. Furthermore, Dick goes on to attack Perry in his mind thinking there’s “something wrong with Little Perry” (108). Since Capote has already attempted to establish a general liking and sympathy towards Perry, he hopes the reader will be close-minded towards Dick and dislike him more for being so rude.
Overall, these two passages are just an illustrative representation of Capote’s consistent characterization of Dick and Perry. What makes Capote’s methods of characterization so different is that he does not merely state facts of each in random order. Each detail included or excluded is done with a specific purpose to manipulate the mind of the reader into sharing the same opinions of each character as

Capote.