The Cold Cut Combo In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

The Cold Cut Combo When someone, or even more than one person, is murdered, most people are interested in who did it and why. What people do not usually think about is what caused the murderer to kill the person(s). The answer to this is simple, it all comes down to their own specific personality. People’s personalities are affected and developed by either their nature, or the way they were nurtured. In the book In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Dick and Perry both have similar qualities but they were brought out by completely different causes. Nature vs nurture is a popular concept of whether a person’s actions are caused by who they are as a person or the way they were raised. For example, if a person was raised in an abusive and cruel family

He had a very difficult and terrible childhood that had scarred him. As a young boy, Perry had a difficult childhood. His mom, who later became an alcoholic, left Perry’s dad, taking Perry and his siblings to San Francisco with her. Perry was then put in a Catholic orphanage, where he was abused by the cruel nuns working there. He then began travelling with his dad until they had reached Alaska, where they decided to live. Perry’s dad, like the nuns from the orphanage, was physically, mentally and most likely sexually abusive to his son. After years and years of torment, Perry left Alaska and was arrested for burglary. While in jail, Perry met Dick, who would later become his literal partner in crime. Once Dick and Perry have been arrested, a psychologist analyzed Perry, and the results prove that Perry’s life growing up is the reason for his actions. Capote states the psychologist's opinion, “‘Perry Smith shows definite signs of severe mental illness. His childhood, related to me and verified by portions of the prison records, was marked by brutality and lack of concern on the part of both parents” (296). It’s evident that the reason for his behavior was a result of how he was raised, Perry’s siblings also didn’t turn out fully normal. The fate of his brother and sisters is told by one of Perry’s sisters on page 183, “The eldest, the brother she loved had shot himself; Fern had fallen out of a window, or

Dick was a popular athlete at in school. He grew up with very little exposure to violence, and his parents remained clueless to his tendencies until they were interviewed by K.B.I. agents after the Clutter family murder. Because Dick was raised in a stable home, there is no reason to suggest that he would turn out to be a murderer and a pedophile. Dick was violent and he was cruel. Even Perry knew that Dick was not a great guy, he had doubts about him throughout the novel. Though Perry mainly was concerned about the murder, he was also disgusted by and tried to stop Dick from molesting young girls. “Seducing pubescent girls, as he had done ‘eight or nine’ times in the last several years…” (Capote 201). Dick’s obsession with girls had nothing to do with how he was raised, he himself had never been sexually abused, and is something he continually did. It was in his nature to sexually harass children, just like it was in his nature to be compelled to murder. This impulse comes from the fact that Dick is power hungry, and feels inferior to others. He is very envious of anyone who had something he did not. An example of this is on page 201:

Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing? Why should that “big-shot bastard” have all the luck? With a knife in his hand, he, Dick, had power. Big-shot bastards like that had better be careful or he might “open them up and let a