Pathos In Cold Blood

Capote talks about the lives of both killers previous to the murders in fairly significant detail. In the case of Perry Smith, his parents divorced early in his childhood and neither his mother nor father really wanted him. This produced feelings of abandonment and uselessness early on in Perry and affected the rest of his life. Capote brings up a letter written to the Kansas State Penitentiary about Perry by Perry's father, who was trying to have Perry paroled for a previous crime he had committed. Perry says that "this biography always set racing a series of emotions--self pity in the lead, love and hate evenly at first, the latter ultimately pulling ahead" (130). Perry didn't feel as though his father ever knew him very well, or even wanted to know him. He says, "whole sections of my Dad was ignorant of. Didn't understand an iota of...I had this great natural musical ability. Which Dad didn't recognize. Or care about...I never got any encouragement from him or anybody else" (133). When Perry's father threw him out of the house one evening because his father could no longer afford to have Perry live with him, Perry lost his sense of direction in life. He even says

Although Perry senselessly murdered a family of four, Capote skillfully humanizes Perry and makes him relatable; therefore, he asserts that good people can do evil things. Capote employs two oxymorons to demonstrate the duality that exists within Perry and how he was easily coaxed into murdering the family. While in Mexico, Perry and his companions conversate whilst in a boat: “While Perry sang, Otto sketched him in a sketchbook. It was a passable likeness, and the artist perceives one not very obvious aspect of the sitter’s countenance--its mischief, an amused, babyish malice that suggested some unkind cupid aiming envenomed arrows” (Capote, 119.)

Besides using anecdotes and stories from his childhood, Capote also used analogies to invoke a sense of sympathy for Perry, thus further using the means of pathos. In specific, a constant ‘comparison’ or analogy coupled with Perry is typically his ‘childish’ like structure. Short legs, small feet. This analogy is used constantly, including the hanging scene, where it is said Dewey had “open his eyes [and] saw the same childish feet, tilted, dangling”(Capote 341). This comparison is seen often when describing Perry and seems to give the man a childlike presence, making him come across as more innocent and understandable. This connection to Perry takes away from the ‘severity’ of his actions and instead reminds readers of his childhood and how it has affected him all through life. Using pathos to soften the personality of a killer and bring to life his struggles helped Capote to better exemplify the ‘makings’ of a murderer. When creating this book, Capote wanted to analyze how a murder came to be and thus how a murderer came to exist - in particular, Perry. The use of pathos in correlation to one of the main characters helped break down the hostile killer into a damaged, young, sensible young man who simply had a tough go at life. The device allowed for connection and personalization.

Truman Capote includes finite details such as Perry’s middle name, and goes down to even the name of the county that Perry was born and grew up in to appeal to his audience’s logic. By giving more detail to Perry’s past life, the audience is able to better grasp the image of Perry, which humanizes the murderer, and is more likely to create an emotion of sympathy towards the criminal and alter the audience’s view on capital punishment. This information is irrelevant to the plot, however, is very strong in supporting Capote’s argument.

Although Dick and Perry may both be killers, Capote uses language to portray Perry as a victim of Dick;therefore, Perry is seen through the eyes of the reader as an innocent man who was simply taken advantage of and molded into a killer by Dick.

Following the emotionally ‘flat’ perspective by Dick, is Perry’s self-pity attitude during his own chapter. Perry knows the annoyance of his voice to Dick, but has no control over his actions. With only having one thought repeated indefinitely, “I think there must be something wrong with us” (capote 30), one would need to vent in some manner. To continue, Perry’s pity persona even has the author himself take pity on him: “Look at his family!” (Capote 30). Capote demands the reader to acknowledge Perry’s grim adolescence and suicidal family: “His mother, an alcoholic, had strangled to death on her own vomit...Fern...jumped out a window...Jimmy...had one day driven his wife to suicide and killed himself the next” (Capote 30). Capote pities Perry and portrays him as human, instead of the monster everyone believes him to be. Capote explains how Perry’s mental state and upcoming is the reason he is mentally unstable. Capote exposes not all criminals are monsters. Referring back to Dick’s passage, Dick claims “Perry could be “such a kid,” always wetting the bed and crying in his sleep” (Capote 29). Perry never matured from his depressing childhood, and he remained a in this state into adulthood. Returning to Perry’s

Capote use three layers of trauma to completely develop the character of Perry Smith. Capote describes Perry’s childhood, mental state, describes why he does certain things

The most dominant strategy that Capote utilizes in order to achieve his purpose is pathos, as he plays on our emotions to get us to feel true sympathy for Perry Smith. This is strategy is overall the most effective one because it allows the viewers to perceive Perry differently. Capote mentions Perry’s abusive and neglectful childhood several times throughout the story’s course in order to make the readers feel empathic, and pitiful towards him. In one instance of the novel, Capote makes out Perry as a hero in a way. He sets up a picture of the killers at the beach, and he mentions how uncomfortable Perry is when he sees Dick talking to a young girl. He describes another instance like this when he says, “Hadn’t they almost got in a fight when quite recently he had prevented Dick from raping a terrified girl” (Capote 202). Perry is willing to stand up to his partner when he comes to situations like this. Readers can’t help but view Perry as a hero in his own way as he protects the young girls from Dick’s pedophilic mind. Capote plays on the assumption that everyone hates child predators, which is almost always true. In a way, Capote makes us feel admiration for Perry’s heroic effort in protecting the innocent, as he “prevented Dick” from doing something horrible. As Perry confesses his crime to Dewey and Duntz, he admits, “But I hoped we could do it without violence” (234). This is one of several moments where the readers get a sense of reluctance from Perry to commit the crime. Although Perry did eventually

The reader gets to “know” Perry Smith very well throughout the novel and acquires the sense that Capote feels sympathetic to his situation as compared to that of Hickock. Smith, introduced as much the loner type, is described by the narrator and the character Smith himself (in a letter to a psychiatrist) as growing up in a low socio-economic bracket with a broken family accompanied by a lack of love and stability characterizing his childhood (and continuing on to adulthood in which is the state of which the book...

In “In Cold Blood” (1966) from page 200 to 202, Capote give us the insight into the past of Dick and Perry characters that caused them to resent a certain type of situation or condition. The author acknowledge this matter by showing how Dick and Perry nature being revealed through what they seen and encounter on their get away trip, first he inform us about how the view of the sea, and people Dick see in the hotels remind him of how he growth to feel hostile against people who possessed thing that he known he couldn’t have, “Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing? Why should that “big shot bastard” have all the luck?” (Rhetorical question and Parallelism were used to emphasize Dick animosity), “open them up and let

In addition, Capote depicts hypersensitive pathos to draw out the compassion of the readers because he wants them to understand the complex layers that make up Perry’s brain. Perry is not a simple murderer. He has

Capote uses Perry as a sympathetic character; asking the reader if Perry’s life had been easier growing up, would he have committed the murders? A point often overlooked is Capote’s detailed exploration into Perry’s childhood and life

The best novels are the ones that connects with the reader and just toys with their emotions, as if they too were also in the story by using pathos, the most powerful appeal. This holds true with Truman Capote’s, In Cold Blood and his writing appealing to the reader’s emotions in the portrayal of Perry Edward Smith and Richard “Dick” Eugene Hickock, the two murders with an addition of Capote showing a great deal of favoritism to Perry over Dick. Throughout the novel, Capote uses tone and diction to allure the reader into the novel’s world and into every character’s life, just as if we knew their whole backstory.

Capote uses syntax to further capitalize on Perry’s dark origins as a source of cruelty. Using brief, but meaningful sentences, Perry is portrayed as a victim of society, repeatedly referring to the people who treated him poorly during his growth. His dark origins capitalized on when he describes his motives for killing the Clutter family: “‘And it wasn’t because of anything the Clutters did. They never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it’s just that the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it’” (290). Perry himself is emphasizing how the Clutters are innocent, but, because of the way people treated him his entire life, they unfortunately had to receive the brunt of his pent-up aggression. He repeats the phrase “like…” to once again draw attention to the fact that it was the people in his life that turned him into the criminal he grew to be. Noting how Perry essentially held a grudge against his childhood

Truman Capote forms a close relationship with convicted murderer, Perry Smith, and allows his own personal perception of Perry to influence his story. Capote repeatedly puts emphasis on the fact that Perry comes from a troubled background and