The most important event in the book, In Cold Blood is the Clutter family being murdered. Without the Clutter family being murdered, there would be no book. Originally Dick and Perry’s plan was to rob the Clutter family, which wouldn’t have been as big of a deal to anyone except the people in Holcomb, Kansas. The whole book is centered around the killings so without the murders taking place this book would not have been written or it would have been written about a robbery, which would make it less interesting. Although, Dick and Perry had no problem killing the Clutters their intent was just to rob them. Originally, Dick and Perry had planned to rob them because they were the richest family in Holcomb, Kansas. If they would have gone to the Clutters and only robbed them, there wouldn’t be a book about this case. Since Holcomb is such a small city, this murder case was very important to them and now so many others. “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” (Capote 244). …show more content…
Everything in this book in some way relates back to either how the Clutters got murdered, the lives of the people murdering or the city they were murdered in. For the most part this book is about the lives of Dick and Perry because they killed the Clutter family. If this book would have just been about Dick and Perry robbing the Clutters, we would not need to know so much background on both. Oh Jesus, was she an Evil Bastard! Incarnate. What she used to do, she'd fill a tub with ice-cold water, put me in it, and hold me under till I was blue. Nearly drowned." (Capote
Dick never wanted to discuss the murders. He always wanted to change the subject. Floyd Wells, his former cellmate, mentioned to Dick that he was a former employee of the Clutters, and they had a safe on the property, unaware that they never had any cash on them. When he did not find the safe or any money, Dick resorted to killing the whole Clutter family. Dick became a little too confident and thought he could get away with murder.
Meanwhile, Dick and Perry know that they have to get out of the small town of Holcomb, so that they are not found and accused of the slaying of the Clutters. They continue to run from place to place including Mexico, Colorado, Las Vegas, and Iowa. Floyd Wells, a former friend of Dick Hickock, whom Dick had told his plans for killing the Clutters, hears the news of the Clutter familiy’s murder on the radio and reported it. Dewey and 3 other KBI agents, recieve information from the Las Vegas police that Perry Smith’s license plate has been spotted, and arrest Dick and Perry. The book goes on to detail Dick and Perry’s time in prison, right up to their
The third section of the story begins with an old cellmate of Dick’s, Floyd Wells. Wells heard about the murder of the Clutter family and immediately knew that Dick committed the crime. He wanted to come forward but was nervous about what could happen to him. When Dick and Floyd shared a cell, they talked about previous jobs they had and when Floyd brought up his experience working on the Clutter farm, Dick could not stop asking questions. He heard about how much money they had which sparked his interest, he then began to ask about the layout of the home.
On November 15, 1959 the Clutter family was brutally murdered in their two story home in rural Holcomb Kansas. Holcomb was a small city in Finney County. Holcomb was so small everyone knew each other. If you lived in a small town where everyone knew each other and all of a sudden a murder of a family happened , who would you think did it? Would you think it was someone you knew, or someone that randomly passed by the town?
Being the smart criminal he is, Dick used his own name to sign the checks. They are caught and arrested by police in Las Vegas. A confession gives the reader a gory description of the vicious murder of the Clutter family. They were tried and convicted of murder after 40 minutes of jury discussion and were sent to Death Row. The story includes lots of flashbacks from Perry Smith’s sad and depressing childhood including alcoholism, sibling suicide, parental abuse and not being allowed to go to school.
But Dick stole his father’s gun and plans to visit Perry’s sister. it foreshadows violence and murder. 10. Kenyon is not interested in girls and spends most of his time in the basement. He is an outsider.
In “In Cold Blood”, the contemplation and suspenseful reflect the things Dewey is thinking of and what he thinks and knows happened. Dewey is trying to solve what happened that night and five years ago. He was questioning murderers moved furniture and bed covers only to find the reason behind this was to make the victims comfortable during the moment of their death. The author's diction reveals how Dewey thinks about the murders and how he feels about solving the Clitter’s case. When Dewey was investigating the murders he told his team to “keep looking” until they found the “connection” with what happened “sunday morning” and what happened “maybe five years ago”.
Instead of breaking a few things in the house or yelling and screaming, out of frustration, he and Dick kill the family! They were so angry and full of rage when they realized there was no safe full of money. So why not just get out of there and find another person or place to rob? It seems to me there was so much adrenaline between the two of them that they took their anger out on the family.
However, the two murderers never took the time to find out more about the Clutter family. Once they realized there was no fortune, Dick did not mind. Dick’s motive for remaining inside the Clutter home was he knew there was a young girl living in the house. His motive was to rape the young girl, Nancy. Nonetheless, the other murderer, Perry Smith, had no motive for killing the Clutter family after realizing there was no fortune.
Although Dick were partners in the murder of the Clutter family, Capote primarily wants to reveal the emotional gap between Dick and Perry; therefore, Capote’s depicts Perry as more sentimental than Dick. When Perry and Dick were stopped at the picnic area in the mountains Capote uses euphemism when Dick and Perry are in a discussion about the murder. “I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did” (Capote 108).
Through similar tactics Capote allows the reader to feel sorry for Dewey, even though he is the man who catches the killing pair. Detective Dewey is first introduced in part two of In Cold Blood, where the readers learn that this would not be an easy case and the Dewey would be the head detective, even though he had personal ties with the Clutter family. The reader would automatically feel sorry for Detective Dewey because he was going to do heavy investigating on a murder of a family he knew and there was very little time to mourn the deaths. Detective Dewey spent countless hours trying to chase down every lead that popped up, taking family time away, which wears on all family members. The reader feels sympathy for Dewey as he loses time with his family around the holiday time because he has become so involved in the case.
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.
Perry’s erratic spontaneous outbursts is what caused him to go through with the murders and slit Mr. Clutter’s throat which put him on the killing frenzy that ended the rest of the Clutters lives. Capote highlights Perry’s sociopathic tendencies by comparing them to that of Dicks Psychopathic tendencies which exemplifies how when put together they are at each others fault for the
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).
The novel, In Cold Blood, is an anomaly in the literary paradigm. The author, Truman Capote, designed his novel in a way that made it unique when compared to others. His fundamental purpose was to present the problem of American violence and the fragility of the American Dream and how it can be so easily shattered. In order to portray his purpose, he used many rhetorical devices including syntax, diction, tone, ethos, logos and pathos. These devices allowed Capote’s novel to be different from the spectrum of other non-fiction novels and to support his purpose.