Alcoholism In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Traits that are loosely dependent on the environment include addiction ability and education level. Addiction is a strange trait, some people can start smoking and quit whenever they want while other people can start smoking and just cannot stop. This could be dependent upon social conditions, for instance, they are encouraged to continue smoking by their friends; however, it is far more likely that this trait is genetic. This is not only true of smoking though, it is true of any drug: alcoholism is one of the more common ones and more easily related to genetics. The thing that makes addiction partially due to the environment is that the will to start doing a drug has to come from somewhere and most often, it is due to the environment. Education

The two murderers Richard and Perry both grew up in less than stellar environments. Richard came from an economically underprivileged family while Perry came from a broken home filled with abuse. These two also had drug issues; Richard seemed to be drawn to alcoholism while Perry was an aspirin addict. In this case, the genetics were not identical but the circumstances that they grew up in were similar; this revealed how much of their traits were genetic. Murderous instinct likely has not even been studied yet but, in this case, the trait would not have been found to be genetic because neither of the parents of the children were killers. Their environments may have pushed the two towards murder but ultimately, killing the Clutter family was a choice, not a genetic trait, and not entirely due to the environment either. There was something in them that twisted and told them that it was alright to kill other people; Perry’s sister even said “they shared a doom against which virtue was no defense" showing that she felt that whatever caused Richard and Perry to kill was out of their control (Capote 185). Ultimately, this example from “In Cold Blood” showed that some behaviors were not due to genetics or the environment but were almost entirely due to choices made by the