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What Is In Cold Blood By Truman Capote Justice

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In his book In Cold Blood, Truman Capote evokes questions about the justice served to Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. The jury sentenced them to death, as they should. The two men were a danger to the public due to their mental instability; although Capote puts a lot of effort into making Smith look like a caring person, Perry still murdered a family of four without motivation. Richard Hickock was the mastermind behind the murders. He deserved the death sentence because he spent so long thinking of how to pull of the perfect murder. Hickock talks early in the book of the Clutter job being an easy one, and he repeatedly states “no witnesses” to Perry. He was more excited to watch people die than he was to find the fabled 10,000 dollars hidden …show more content…

Dick deserved the death sentence because he wanted to wreak havoc on this family; Perry was simply his means of doing so. Perry’s twisted mind does not conceive death as a motivated. He says, “Soldiers don’t lose much sleep. They murder, and get medals for doing it. The good people of Kansas want to murder me—and some hangman will be glad to get the work” (Smith 291). To Perry, being hanged is not a punishment, but just another murder. There is no motivation to murder in this world that Perry can conceive. He has a lack of appreciation for human life, which can be attributed to his distrust in people since his childhood. After speaking about the unimportance of dying Smith says, “I only knew the Clutters maybe an hour. If I’d really known them, I guess I’d feel different. I don’t think I could live with myself. But the way it was, it was like picking off targets in a shooting gallery” (Smith 291). This statement is relevant to how the jury prosecuted Smith because they only knew him as a killer. If …show more content…

He hoped to see Perry and his partner hanged—hanged back to back,” writes Capote (246). This is a summarization of Perry’s character and outcome in the book. Perry has redeeming qualities, he sets a pillow under Kenyon’s head, he briefly is remorseful over the killings, and puts down a mattress box for Mr. Clutter. But, even after all this, Perry was still the murderer of four innocent people. At the end of the book Perry and Dick still killed four people without motivation. Dick did not deserve sympathy from anyone; Capote did not remotely try to draw attention to Dick’s redeeming qualities, if any could be found. Dick premeditated the murder for years, he played the scenario out in his head over and over and knew that he wanted no one left alive. Dick had nothing but 10,000 dollars on his mind that night, and was willing to let Perry to anything to find it. Regardless of the portrayal of either character in this book, they both were responsible for the death of four innocent people in their own

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In Cold Blood was first published in book form by Random House in January 1966. The book talks about the 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a farmer from Holcomb, Kansas, his wife, and two of their four children. In Cold Blood brought Capote much praise from the literary community, but despite the book's billing as a factual account. Truman Capote included both Richard Hicklock and Perry Smith criminal histories and warrants. Capote had plenty of interview interviewed the murders before they were hung to

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971 Words | 4 Pages

This situation is that of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Hitler was an evil mastermind who manipulated and persuaded the Nazi Party to kill millions of Jews. Dick is similar to Hitler in that he manipulated and persuaded Perry to kill the Clutters’. While the comparison between Dick and Hitler may seem dire, it does not deviate from the fact that he is the source of the killings.

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178 Words | 1 Pages

While Perry is mortified that he and Dick could commit such a gruesome crime, Dick couldn’t care less. All Dick is worried about is how odd Perry is. Because of how quick Perry’s mood could change, Dick thought he was “spooky as hell.” Now, Perry wasn’t your average run of the mill man. He still wets the bed, cries in his sleep, and “could slide into a fury ‘quicker than ten drunk Indians’”.

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675 Words | 3 Pages

#5- Barbara refutes the nurture debate. In the letter to Perry, she explains how their brother, Jimmy, had the right mindset to succeed: “I remember how he worked & went to school when there was no one to tell him & it was his own WILL to make something of himself” (Capote 140). Even in a bad environment, Jimmy, still strived to do the right thing. His mindset was set to succeed, unaffected to a bad environment.

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758 Words | 4 Pages

Everyone is born with the capability to do evil, however, the events and environment in our lives shape our psyche to such an irrefutably extreme extent that they define our character and our conscience, redefining what we see as right and wrong. Perry is very sensitive by nature due to his family’s troubles and his father’s behavior. The pressure that Perry feels to impress Dick, who he makes into a faux father figure, combined with the weight of his past push him to the breaking point which happens to be the Clutter murders. Perry was bound by his experience, he could never fully escape the horrors of his childhood as they were the limits of his apprehension. Regardless of Perry’s traumatic childhood, justice must be equally upheld to everyone, despite the differences in the ways we were raised.

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1239 Words | 5 Pages

Dick and Perry had already once been in prison due to nonviolent charges, but when they were released for parole, they conducted a mass murder. The Catholic Church’s point of view is in correspondence with many in the book, “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor” (Catholic Church 2306). The Catholic Church does not fully support the death penalty, it is only used as a last resort. The Catholic Church does not believe that capital

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1512 Words | 7 Pages

After most people hear what Perry has gone through you immediately give him a get out of jail free card right? You think that since he had a difficult upbringing he should be exempt from receiving the death penalty? Although you may think this, this is certainly not an excuse for such a violent act. Throughout In Cold Blood, Capote attempts to portray to the reader that Smith in a way should be exempt from the crime he commited and how one should not blame it on Smith himself, but his psychological background. Specifically when Al Dewey, the head of the Clutter murder investigation, states how the crime was not in fact Smiths fault.

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961 Words | 4 Pages

Capote portrays only one of these two seemingly distinct characters (Perry) in a way that the reader feels the need to relate to and even sympathize with him. One can be taken aback by such an attachment to a murderer. This is not surprising as the author uses his compassionate diction to manipulate the reader’s emotions with a use of pathos, the appeal to emotions. At one point Capote goes as far as to write that “Smith’s life had been no bed of roses,” (Capote 245) attempting to have the readers relate to Perry. On the other hand, Capote has Dick say this about himself: “Deal me out, baby, I’m a normal” (Capote 116).

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502 Words | 3 Pages

In this final section of the book, Dick and Perry are caught and interrogated. Dick does not break easily, but ends up confessing the crime and blames the murder on Perry. Dewey, the detective interrogating Perry, tells Perry that Dick confessed. Perry at first does not believe, then Dewey gives a detail that only Dick and Perry would know. Perry then confesses and gives the full story.

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432 Words | 2 Pages

From the time of hanging to the time their hearts ceased beating, it took nineteen and twenty minutes, respectively. Also, in preparation for the trial of the Clutter family murderers, doctors did psychiatric evaluations of the pair. Capote includes what the doctors would have said had they been allowed to elucidate during the trial. The evaluations suggest that Hickock and Smith might have been better off in a mental institution. By including the conversation at the hangings, the elapsed time before death, and the doctors' unspoken evaluation, Capote suggests that neither the death penalty nor hanging is always the best course of action for a person's crime.

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In doing so Capote invents a new genre of literature by telling the story through a new perspective. Capote as a writer chooses to put most of the focus of the book on the criminals, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, particularly Smith. He follows Smith’s life story, and explains that Smith was abused as a child, and the reader is to infer that as a result he seeks approval from others. This approval is what leads him to kill, and invent stories about killing, as he wants Dick to think of him as macho. Capote provides a plethora of evidence to support this reasoning, “He was seven years old, a hated, hating half-breed child living in a California orphanage run by nuns- shrouded disciplinarians who whipped him for wetting his bed,” (93).

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590 Words | 3 Pages

Although Perry is responsible for the murder of four innocent people, Perry’s actions do not reflect on who he is as a person because he is easily influenced, therefore; showing how easily people can be pressured into doing something they would not typically do. Dick, a violent, cold-hearted, manipulator, has molded Perry into the person he is today. As Perry is a follower, Dick has taken advantage of that by turning Perry into the cold-blooded killer he is today. Capote displays Dick’s manipulation of Perry through symbolism to make evident that while Perry did pull the trigger on four innocent people, although the fault does not entirely lay on him, as he was taken advantage of by Dick.

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582 Words | 3 Pages

Why take someone’s life for money or even worse than that why would you take a whole family’s life? It’s not right to kill someone for no reason, in fact it’s not right to kill anyone. Anyone who killed someone should get the death penalty because they deserve it. They just took someone’s life for no reason at all. So Perry and Dick should get the death penalty for killing an entire family for no reason at all.

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596 Words | 3 Pages

In In Cold Blood, the issue over the death penalty is prominent. Did Perry and Dick deserve to die? Should the severity of one’s crime determine one’s fate? Although Truman Capote writes the novel in a straightforward, “from a distance” way, he conveys, through his characters, theme, and plot development, that the death penalty is an issue that should be looked at from all sides and that the legal system itself is the real issue at hand, and that the death penalty is used as a means to suppress the distress and indignation of the citizens surrounding the case, instead of suppressing the victim himself.

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1177 Words | 5 Pages

While Dick’s attempt to profit from Perry originates from a lie that Perry creates in order to gain Dick’s respect, the language that Capote uses to illustrate Dick’s exploitation does not leave room for excuses or sympathy. The tone indicates Dick has malicious intention in befriending Perry, which gives the readers a cynical impression of him. Furthermore, Dick is seen to be disregarding of the gravity of his crimes, especially as he replies to Perry’s comment, “I think there must be something wrong with us" (Capote 114) to commit the murder like they did, in which Dick replies, “Deal me out, baby, I'm a normal,” and continues to entertain the thought, “ But Perry—there

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