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In Cold Blood Nature Or Nurture

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In Cold Blood One of the most debated subjects in history is nurture vs. nature. Many people claim nature because of our lineage leading back to the monkey. Others argue nurture, claiming it doesn’t matter where you come from it is how you are raised. In cold blood is a non-fictional book, for the most part, and it is about how two men, Dick and Perry, kill the Clutter family. Throughout the book one is taken on a ride, figuring out the motive, who, what, where and how. As of now we will be learning is if either nurture or nature effected Dick’s or Perry’s lives. Nurture: to care for and encourage the growth of, also caring for and encouraging the growth of someone or something. Perry had neither a comforting nor caring childhood, an abusive …show more content…

All of Perry’s siblings were sent to school and got enough food to eat every night. ‘”Please, Bobo. Please listen. You think I like myself? But that bastard never gave me a chance. He wouldn’t let me go to school…I was a bad kid…Every damn one of you go an education. Everybody but me. And I hate you, all of you-Dad and everyone’…if it meant cleaning up Mama’s drunken vomit, if it meant never anything nice to wear or enough to eat” (185). Perry, knowing he was a bad kid, knew that he could have been a better man if his father had sent him to school. With all this in mind, Perry could of have had a better future laid out for him if he had been given a better, more supporting, nurturing …show more content…

As said by Shoomp “…Dick has what his prison psychiatrist suggests is an attachment disorder (among a zillion other problems.) He can’t experience any sense of emotional connection to another person or have concern for the effect of his actions on anyone else. This lets him do what he does without being particularly bothered by it”. Dick’s mental state could have easily influenced his dark personality and shallow heartedness. “the child accepted the gift, whereupon Dick smiled and winked at her. He was sorry he felt as he did about her, for his sexual interest in female children was a failing of which he was “secretly ashamed”—a secret he’d not confessed to anyone and hoped no one suspected.” Dick, much like Perry, knew that there was something wrong with him, that he wasn’t normal. Due to Dick’s mental issue he never connected with people well after that, it was defiantly nature that came into play during Dick’s

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Dick did not have any second thoughts about the murder. He had firmly wanted to walk-in and kill the Clutter family despite their innocence. Dick viewed the Clutters’ as an opportunity that was going to make him rich. There was not any

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Some can have a great childhood while others like Perry can have a miserable and harsh childhood. The author successfully proves this by showing the contrast in the childhood of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. The author also presents that Perry had a conscience at some points of his life. He said he hated people who can’t control themselves when Dick wanted to rape Nancy. But him being so haunted by his demons caused him to kill not only an unknown person in Las Vegas but kill a family of 4 who just “happened to be there”.

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There has been a longstanding debate between nature and nurture in psychology for decades. An examination of whether an individual's traits and behaviors are influenced by their genetics or their surrounding environment. There is a particular relevance to this debate for Dick and Perry in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", where their backgrounds and life experiences significantly affect their personalities and actions. In the case of Dick and Perry, their upbringing and environment had a profound impact on their actions and ultimately led to their descent into criminality. At the same time, certain aspects of their personalities and character traits are inherent, which may have also contributed to their behavior.

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Nature versus nurture is one of the most controversial debates in contemporary psychology. The debate concerning whether or not humans are born with the preset characteristics that will shape lives for years to come or whether actions are a result of the events and the environment that pave the way for our behavioral characteristics. Capote’s “In Cold Blood” gives the audience a detailed look into the upbringing of the character Perry Smith, creating a sympathetic outlook towards his past and attempting to bring a sense of understanding as to how a seemingly harmless young man could brutally murder four innocent people. In the case of Perry Smith, nurture was the cause of his actions in regards to the Clutter family murders.

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Every child needs to be led in the right direction and is often influenced by the path their parents want for them. Perry’s father, allowing him to never return to school, deprived him of a basic education that all children deserve. Perry remarks, “‘I finished the third grade,’ Perry recalled. Which was the finish. I never went back” (Capote 132).

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Perry was never given a fair chance to thrive at life through his childhood. Truman uses this to explain why Perry is the way he is. Capote illustrates the worst of Perry's life to defend Perry’s as a person apart from his actions. Lastly Capote posses Perry as human through his hopes from a better life, as illustrated in the text, “...the dream of drifting downward through strange waters, of plunging toward a green sea-dusk, sliding past the scaly, savage-eyed protectors of a ship’s

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“Nature is the consists of the genetic material that a person inherits from their parents,” and “Nature refers to your experiences.” In the book In Cold Blood in stated that Dick wanted to go to college to be an engineer, but his parents couldn’t afford it. So in that case he tried to live above his means and acquired a great deal of debt, he changed jobs often to try to make more money to pay for the things he wanted. After a while Dick started making very bad decisions that reflected bad on his appearance, he started gambling, cheating on his wife and even writing bad checks after a car accident that had happened on the year 1950. There was no clear visual on whether nature or nurture cased Dick to become a violent criminal.

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Dick, on the other hand, was operating according to a plan, convincing Perry to go along with him. While Dick is more controlling, he grows attached to Perry and never manages to get rid of him, whatever he may say to himself. While Dick may have usually been in control, Perry did most of the work. He was able to murder, and during interrogations,

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In this moment, since that guy had made Dick really angry, his first thought was to merely kill the guy that had made him mad. This shows that Dick let his anger get the best of him which brought out the worst out of him. Everyone knew Dick as a nice guy however, this goes to show

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Subsequently, Capote continues to mention Perry’s awful childhood throughout the book, and

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He is portrayed as a mastermind in the cold-blooded killing of the Clutters family, a man with little respect for the lives of others, which can be seen through Dick’s expression before the murder of the Clutters when he converses Perry, “We’re gonna go in there and splatter those walls with hair” (Capote 234). This sudden tone shift enables Capote to depict Dick as a cruel and immoral character. Dick’s lack of empathy and concern for other people beside himself allow him to commit crimes without remorse, which is in contrast to Perry’s moral contemplation after each bad actions they committed. Moreover, Dick is represented as the true criminal with evident motives in murdering the Clutters, while Perry is seen as a vulnerable victim who depends on Dick for validation and acceptance, something in which Dick happily provides in order to manipulate Perry, as Capote writes, “Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, ‘a natural born killer,’—absolutely sane but conscienceless, and capable of dealing with or without motive, the coldest-blooded deathblows. It was Dick's theory that such a gift could, under his supervision, be profitably exploited” (Capote 205).

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From this novel, we can learn and see that being ruthless and irrational will eventually lead us to disappointment. Dick is a world renowned psychologist who is intelligent and ambitious. He works in a clinic in Switzerland and this is where he meets Nicole Diver, a woman who seeks help from him after being raped by her father. The tragedy that struck her affects her deeply physically and mentally causing her to suffer from schizophrenia, a mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between a real life experience and an unrealistic imagination. When Dick sets out and joins the army, Nicole sends him letters after letters talking about absolutely everything under the sun.

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It is pretty hard to unpack the influences in my life that have made me into the person I am today in a two-page paper. However, after thinking about it for a long time I could see a pattern of certain influences that kept coming up when I thought about who I am today and what made me into the person I am. After several unsuccessful attempts to rank the influences based on importance I decided merge them into two major themes. If I was to tell a complete stranger what the source of my skills, principles, and attitudes were; I would have to say they are attributed to my family and my extracurricular activities. These may seem like 2 very broad categories, but at the end of the day they are what shaped me into the person I am today.

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