Life And Nurture In In Cold Blood By Perry Smith

A lot of those insecurities show through the way Perry acts around Dick; one of these are seen with the use of juxtaposition, “The sound of Dick’s voice was like an injection of some potent narcotic, a drug that, invading his veins, produced a delirium of colliding sensations: tension and relief, fury and affection. He advanced toward Dick with clenched fists. ‘You sonofabitch,’ he said”(Capote 194). Perry has an internal conflict over whether he should be mad at Dick for overjoyed to see him. As a child Perry’s mother neglected him, left him by himself. He doesn’t want that to happen again, he doesn’t want Dick to abandon him like his parents did. This affection for Dick was toxic and caused the death of the Clutter family. Though this whole section of the book Capote uses a multitude of people and events to prove Perry is not to blame for how he has acted, it was the fault of this neglected childhood. If it weren’t for Perry’s trauma as a child, he may never feel these feelings for Dick preventing multiple deaths including their

This all comes down to the conclusion that maybe, If Perry would have lived a better life and more care was given to him from his parents and his parents more responsible and a bit

Truman Capote saw Perry as being superior to others in his uniqueness and, since he is “absent” from the novel, expressed this opinion in Willie-Jay’s character accounts of Perry. After asserting Willie-Jay’s legitimacy, Capote presents the farewell letter that Willie-Jay wrote to Perry. In it, Willie-Jay analyzes Perry in a psychologist-like manner; he writes:

Why did Chasteen title the book Born in Blood and Fire? With all of its rich diversity and complex history, why does it make sense to still speak of one “Latin American history”?

The novel The Other Wes Moore was written by Wes Moore and it speaks upon, two boys with the same name but both have different fates. The Other Wes Moore touch's base on how the environment and experience can shape an person. The book allows you to follow two young boys named Wes Moore who tend to make life changing decisions that in the long run shape and effect their future. The purpose behind this phenomenal novel is to understand the pain and struggle to overcome the streets and how the streets can raise you and change you as a person. Furthermore, allowing you to foreshadow your thoughts of how your environment and experience can shape who you become. The environment we live in does play a significant role in our growth in life. Nature and nurture can effect individual success in different aspects. In the novel The Other Wes Moore the author Wes uses narrative elements such as parallelism and characterization to describe and tell both Wes's stories.

Capote’s diction makes Perry seem like a moral human being. For instance, Capote writes, “All along Dewey had argued that the mattress box had been placed on the floor for the comfort of Mr. Clutter, and taking heed of similar hints, other fragmentary indications of ironic,

As a child Perry grew up with a limited education. When he is young and after his parent’s divorce Perry is living with his dad and is going to school. He finishes grade three but after that he never returns. Perry’s father moves from state to state throughout his childhood and prevents Perry from returning to school. Perry’s father wants Perry to stay with him instead of going to school so he can do work and take care of him. As Perry grows older however he understands that his father kept him out of school and Perry becomes extremely angry with him. Smith stated, “That bastard never gave me a chance. He wouldn’t let me go to school…. he didn’t want me to learn anything, only how to tote and carry for him. Dumb. Ignorant. That’s the way he wanted me to be. So that I could never escape him” (Capote 185). However, Perry is an intelligent and talented man with great potential. He has natural music ability, he likes to read and improve his vocabulary, and he also knows how to draw. In spite of this he never received encouragement from his father or anyone else: “Oh, the man I could have been! ... But the time came I begged to go to school. I happen to have a brilliant

Capote describes and effectively develops the character of Perry Smith by giving us a small glimpse into Perry Smith’s childhood. Perry Smith had an anything but ordinary childhood. Perry had a horrible childhood. This was due to the fact that his parents split apart and he was treated awfully in the places that took him in. Perry’s first horrible experience was in an orphanage. “ The one where the Black Widows were always at me. Hitting me. Because of wetting the bed. Which is one reason I have an aversion to nuns.”( Perry Smith, pg. 206). The nuns beat Perry because he would wet the bed. He would wet the bed because of a weak kidney. Perry was also almost killed by a salvation army nurse. The nurse tried to drown him. “A children’s shelter operated by the Salvation Army. They hated me, too. For wetting the bed. And being half-Indian. There was this one nurse, she used to call me ‘nigger’ and say there wasn’t any difference between niggers and Indians. 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.”(Perry Smith, pg. 206). The constant beatings would give just about anyone a bad childhood to begin with; but it could also lead into the anger and mental issues that Perry suffers

Firstly, the reason why Perry Smith may have a mental illness is because the way he was raised as a child. Capote stated, “Perry shows definite signs of severe mental illness.” Neglected as a child, he has developed a ‘paranoid’ orientation toward the world,” and “in evaluating the intentions and feelings of others, his ability to separate the real intention from his own mental projections is very poor.” Perhaps most significant is his “poorly controlled rage—easily triggered by any feeling of being tricked, slighted or labeled inferior to others.” His personality traits, in other words, most closely resemble that of a paranoid schizophrenic.” (Capote Page 191). That quote is trying to explain how Capote is trying to alert his readers that Perry Smith was not raised in the proper environment. Also, it’s showing that Perry is very easily triggered and could have a manic episode at any time. A reason as to why he may be triggered so easily is because he never experienced what a real home was like and what an actual family was. This information is included because Capote said “In all of

Truman Capote put a lot of thought into this writing and in order to change the way people looked at this almost new type of writing, he decided to demonstrate pathos in order to do this. In the novel when talking about the murders Perry said, “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.” (204). Right here Capote almost makes you feel bad for Perry and tries to show that Perry really is not an evil person and almost did not want to commit the murders. Now this supports his purpose because nobody tries to make the reader feel bad for the murderers. They are usually viewed as evil, disturbed people yet Perry is almost looked upon as someone who is not evil and almost as just someone who was forced into this. Nobody ever feels bad for a murderer yet in this novel, almost everyone starts to feel bad for them. Which really changes the way people write these types of novels and at the time seemed very unorthodox. Capote also makes people sympathize for the murderer by having Perry talk about his background. Perry says, “‘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. But she got found out, the bitch. Because I caught pneumonia. I was so sick that Dad came back. When I got well, he took me away’” (132). Now with almost every murderer they have a very rough upbringing yet people still do not

Perry Smith and Dick Hickock were two very different men who came together in one the most renowned and talked about murders in American history. Although the men’s motives were the same, the psychological differences that they experienced after the murders were very different. Smith and Hickock were living testaments to the fact that one’s upbringing really does play a part into the person one will someday become. For Perry, his traumatic family experiences, or lack of them, led him to a psychotic malfunction and for

Early on, Capote makes Smith seem a more sympathetic character, “Yes, and he had told Dick was true… Sierra Madre?” (Capote, 17). Capote makes Perry seem almost childlike as he describes Perry’s naive plan to search for gold in the Sierra Madre, which causes the reader to wrongly assume Smith is innocent, or at least more so than Hickock. While describing the murder of the Clutter family, Perry states, “And I thought… So I went back upstairs,” (277). Truman Capote deliberately includes Perry’s feeling that “It was like [he] wasn’t a part of it. More as though [he] was reading a story,” to show the level of dissociation Perry experiences. Even after Smith is found guilty of murder, the reader still feels some sympathy for Perry as Capote hints that Perry cannot be held accountable for his own actions. Just before he is hanged, Smith remarks, “It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize,” (392-393). Capote includes Perry’s last words, which carry significant emotional weight, to evoke a final sympathetic reaction in the reader. Through Perry Smith, Capote creates pathos to demonstrate the harsh nature of capital punishment and cause the reader to wonder if it is the right

In Truman Capote’s famous non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood, there is evidence that supports the injustices of the trial: death penalty. The final outcome of the trail was never to be any different than death. “Of all the people in all the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered” (Capote 85). We know the two men who killed the Clutter family, Perry Smith and Bill Hickock, preplanned the crime with malice and forethought. Although the actions were crul and grusome, does Death Row fit what they did if their pasts, childhood environments and situation, are bad. Capote shows the effect of childhood on the killers and if the death penalty is fair. Capote gives the killers a voice to show their humanity by giving childhood

The psychiatrist who examined Perry said, "his personality present personality structure is very nearly that of a paranoid schizophrenic reaction." (298). Then, the author included a journal about murderers without clear motive. The journal said "The history relating to extreme violence, whether fantasized, observed in reality, or actually experienced by the child, fits in with the psychoanalytic hypothesis that the child's exposure to overwhelming

"My last night of childhood began with a visit home (Butler, 1995, p. 1).” In her short story Bloodchild, Octavia Butler presents the story of a boy named Gan raised in a dystopian society where two different species depend on each other to survive. From a psychological point of view, childhood is a process that marks a big part of your life. In Freud's subconscious theory, different events can be compared with the growth of Gan: the human mind structured as an iceberg, the memories of Gan and the last day of his childhood.