Sympathy For In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, was a non-fictional novel published in 1965. Written in four parts, Capote meticulously details the brutal 1959 murders of the recognized farmer Herbert Clutter, Bonie Clutter, Nancy Clutter and Kenyon Clutter in the small, once peaceful, city of Holcomb, Kansas. Throughout the book, while Capote sympathetically depicts the murders of the Clutter family, we also realize that the author has a strong sympathy for one of the murders called Perry Edward Smith. Although the novel was intended to be written in a journalistic form, Capote seems to fictionalize much of the information used to write the novel in order to add suspense and certain reactions from the readers. Truman Capote’s new literary form of “the non-fictional novel” leaves the readers feeling conflicting emotions

Although he is branded as the murder, Truman Capote sympathetically describes Perry throughout the novel as a pitiable character. Firstly, Capote begins by referring to Perry’s atrocious childhood as a way to emphasize on the trauma he suffered as a young boy. We learn that Smith’s parents were divorced and thus had to live with his mother, whom was a heavy alcoholic. He was ultimately sent to a Catholic orphanage where we learn Perry suffered due to the beatings he would get from the nuns: “always at him. Hitting him” (page one hundred and thirty two). In addition, he had a sister and two other brothers who committed suicide as he grew up. As we look back at his childhood, we can see that Perry represents everything it means to come from a broken family and that his bad childhood deprived from relating to people in a positive way. Maybe Perry was the murder of this malicious act, but as a reader, it was troublesome to not feel sympathy for a person who was deprived of living a happy