The important items, that any person keeps close, strongly reflect the various aspects of their personality and the ideals they hold. This concept is clearly seen in Perry Smith, a creative and intelligent murderer, from Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. This novel begins with Dick and Perry killing the Clutter family for their wealth. The story then follows Dick and Perry as they try to escape the pursuing police. Throughout, Perry and Dick’s conflicting personalities hinder their ability to carry out their original plan. Perry keeps a collection of interesting, seemingly random items, but they represent significant points in his life. Perry’s eclectic collection reflects his value of intelligence, his search for stability, and pursuit of forgiveness.
Perry’s obsession with his intelligence and that of others is clearly shown. “The thicker of which constituted his personal dictionary, a non-alphabetically listed miscellany of words he believed ‘beautiful’ or ‘useful’ or at least ‘worth memorizing” (146). Perry had a false idea of intelligence and what it meant to be smart. His personal dictionary included words that were irrelevant and unlikely to be used in pedestrian conversations. Perry’s outlook on intelligence is skewed, and he does not understand how to use his intelligence. Perry is also envious of others’ ability to use their education. A prime example of this is of his conversation with his sister Barbara, “Please Bobo. Please listen. You think I like myself? Oh the man I could have been. Every damn one of you got an education. Everybody but me” (185). Perry is angered by the fact his siblings received an education, while he remained uneducated. He feels cheated that his sister is better educated than him. Perry envies the...
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...e relieved it. Perry seeks forgiveness for his actions and is remorseful.
Perry carries an interesting personal dictionary, a snake belt, and letters received in jail, to represent his defining characteristics. Perry values the intelligence found in him, and envies that in others. His heterogeneous personal dictionary shows he celebrates intelligence, but does not understand it fully. Perry searches for a stable environment, because he was deprived of one as a child. Perry’s belt symbolizes a stable time in his life, where he was happy. His search for forgiveness from his mistakes is apparent throughout the novel. He keeps the letters his family wrote him in jail because he hopes to find forgiveness in them. Examining the important objects people keep is telling to their personalities.
Works Cited
Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1993. Print.
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 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 ...
Richard Mulcaster, a British instructor of English, once wrote, “Nature makes the boy toward, nurture sees him forward.” Mulcaster recognizes that both genetic and environmental factors determine the type of a person one becomes. Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood gives the reader an opportunity to see prime examples of how nature and nurture influence one’s character. Capote’s novel, In Cold Blood introduces the reader to two men; Richard Eugene Hickock known as Dick throughout the novel, and Perry Edward Smith whose lives of crime are almost identical; although both Perry and Richard come from very humble backgrounds, their childhood particularly their family life, has very little in common. It is not until later in their lives that we begin to see similarities between the two men. Despite their differences, Perry’s upbringing and Dick’s genetic disposition allow both men to share a disregard for life, which becomes apparent on the night they gruesomely burglarized and murdered four innocent members of the Clutter family.
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
In the book “In Cold Blood” we meet Perry Edward Smith one of the men accused of killing the Clutter family. Perry is a unique man for how he see the world and how the world sees him. Although the townspeople and those who had heard of the murder only saw Parry as a murder. There is however one man who sees Perry more than he appeared to be and that man was Truman Capote. Perry had an interesting life from how he was raised, becoming friends with Richard Eugene Hickock, to the murder of the Clutter family, all the way to Capote writing about him and the trail he and Dick must face. It was Capote who brought the idea that Perry was not a bad person persa but rather he made a mistake that has caused him to spend the rest of his life behind the bars of a jail.
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...
All of mans behavior comes from somewhere in the universe, but the most important is how we control our emotions. Perry's life story brought him a sense of humor and wisdom to belong deeply to both the community and the land. He shows his responsibility as a fireman saving the lives of women and children, maybe this is the best way he could express his manliness. Perry States, "There is an undeniable thrill in fighting fire. at some level most of us have a perverse hanger for danger, a desire to be tested, to survive fire-a trial by fire literally."
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
book, and by the end of the book we feel like we know exactly how Perry feels, and we have a understanding of some of the hardships that the soldiers faced in Vietnam. In this book, Perry kills
The novel The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger depicts a journey of a young man named Holden Caulfield where he encounters many of life’s challenges. As Holden has been bouncing between schools all his life, he just recently got kicked out of his current one: Pencey Prep. He has trouble focusing in school and has experienced many traumatic events in his life, like the death of his little brother Allie. Many believe the novel should be banned, but there is an underlying message Holden is trying to communicate. Throughout Holden's journey many feel that there were ban-worthy moments, but the traits he demonstrates are most powerful: compassion, maturity/coming of age and intelligence.
In Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, the Clutter family’s murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, are exposed like never before. The novel allows the reader to experience an intimate understanding of the murderer’s pasts, thoughts, and feelings. It goes into great detail of Smith and Hickock’s pasts which helps to explain the path of life they were walking leading up to the murder’s, as well as the thought’s that were running through their minds after the killings.
Perry is also deeply developed, as the novel goes into his family background, through old letters. His entire family is in shambles, but he was always closest to his...
In the nonfiction novel, “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote, the author tells a story of the murderers and victims of a slaughter case in Holcomb, Kansas. Instead of writing a book on the murder case as a crime report, the author decides to write about the people. The people we learn about are the killers, Dick and Perry, and the murdered family, the Clutters. The author describes how each family was and makes the portrayals of Dick and Perry’s family different from the Clutters.The portrayal of the Clutters and of Dick and Perry’s families, was used to describe what the American Dream was for each character. In the beginning we learn about what type of family the Clutters were and how they represented the American Dream for the people of Holcomb.
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.
What was wrong with Holden, the main character in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D.Salinger, was his moral revulsion against anything that was ugly, evil, cruel, or what he called "phoney" and his acute responsiveness to beauty and innocence, especially the innocence of the very young, in whom he saw reflected his own lost childhood. There is something wrong or lacking in the novels of despair and frustration of many writers. The sour note of bitterness and the recurring theme of sadism have become almost a convention, never thoroughly explained by the author's dependence on a psychoanalytical interpretation of a major character. The boys who are spoiled or turned into budding homosexuals by their mothers and a loveless home life are as familiar to us today as stalwart and dependable young heroes such as John Wayne were to an earlier generation. We have accepted this interpretation of the restlessness and bewilderment of our young men and boys because no one had anything better to offer. It is tragic to hear the anguished cry of parents: "What have we done to harm him? Why doesn't he care about anything? He is a bright boy, but why does he fail to pass his examinations? Why won't he talk to us?"