Perry Smith In Cold Blood Analysis

Although in the first two sections of the book Capote describes the innocent side of Perry, he shows the negative aspects of Perry to then explain reasons why he deserves less punishment; therefore people with traumatic pasts do not deserve as much of the blame for their actions.

The same psychiatrist, Johnathan H. Pincus examined 14 other death row inmates who had murdered when they were under the age of 18 and realized that they all had the same factors of neurologic damage, abuse, and paranoid thinking (Pincus, 29). A study done by Lisa Marshall and David Cooke shows the differences between the childhoods of psychopath criminals and non-psychopath criminals. They used the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse to show how much the environment your surrounded with as a child can affect your adult life. Not only did they study the results of familial childhood factors such as neglect, physical abuse, and psychological abuse but they also looked into societal factors such as negative school experience and negative school performance. Results showed that “Inadequate or incompetent parenting leads to insecure attachment bonding that forecasts low levels of empathy, compliance, cooperation and self control.” (Lykken,199). The most obvious differences in the childhoods of psychopath criminals and non-psychopath criminals were in parental discipline, parental neglect, and negative school performance. (Marshall and Cooke, The Childhood experiences of psychopaths). Another environmental factor that should

In the novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote shares an emotional connection with two murderers by the names, Richard (Dick) Hickock and Perry Smith. Capote tells a story about two murderers and their background stories as well. He shows their humanity as well as their wickedness, but also that not all murderers are cruel, until the second they are hung to their death. Some may believe that in a crime case one might hate the murderers but not Capote, he saw the good and bad in both. He showed their humanity along with his sympathy he had towards both murderers.

Parents are supposed to shelter their children from the fraudulent outside world and keep their purity intact. Perry Smith, murderer of the Clutter family, had an upbringing that “was marked by brutality and lack of concern on the part of both parents.” Due to his childhood he “seems to have grown up without direction, and without ever having absorbed any fixed sense of moral values.” He felt no regret for murdering the family, only that he felt sorry that they were the ones “ that … had to pay for it.” While Dick considered Perry as innocent, “he had never been with a woman”, he believed Perry was a “natural born killer” who “attaches little real value to human life”. Perry’s tragic upbringing had turned him into a cold-blooded killer unaware of the beauty of innocence, which he so easily stole from the Clutter family the moment he killed them. Innocent people cannot be protected from the individual whose innocence is not present.

He verbally demands to be removed from the conversation. He also subtly bullies Perry by calling him a baby for mentioning his worries. Dick finds Perry’s confusion and commentary rather irritating because it is a reminder of the murder.

The dynamic between Dick and Perry was always fragile and dominated by a need to determine who was more masculine, who was in charge. This is made easier by simply blaming the other one for any negative consequences. Dick and Perry weren't particularly fond of one another; they had differing hopes, long-term goals, and motives. A dynamic as fragile as this was easily shattered after their arrests, leading to quick confessions and a solution to the puzzling quadruple

Capote shows that one can be conditioned to criminality due to maltreatment during childhood or one can be born to criminality. Capote illustrates that through childhood trauma one develops mental illnesses in which leads them to criminality. Perry Smith suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and Post-Traumatic stress disorder which correlates heavily with violence. Paranoid psychotic offender’s violence often reached deadly proportions, driven by motives of self-defense when facing intense paranoid feelings directed toward personal, commonly blood-related targets (Nester 1976).Perry Smith's "personality structure is very nearly that of a paranoid schizophrenic reaction" (Capote, In Cold Blood 298). Perry Smith suffers from a cluster A personality disorder which is similar to paranoid schizophrenia.

Capote makes it clear that Perry has problems all throughout the book but depicts why he has problems in these two chapters which is all due to his problematic past. Most of Perry’s life consisted of suicides and alcoholism within his own family. Perry has even tried to deny the truth with Capote saying “Perry had ever since ‘tried to believe she slipped for he loved fern’” (pg. 110). Even though the readers at this moment of the book don’t know much on Dick’s past, Dick has also suffered trauma within his past which caused him to be the way he is, a very similar trait both characters share.

Argument-Both Dick and Perry were involved in the Kansas murders, but only Perry actually committed the horrendous deed of killing four human beings, whereas Dick was only an accomplice in the robbery gone wrong; Perry deserved the death penalty but Dick did not.

Perry’s obsession with fancies of adventures in foreign locales begin early in the book. Numerous of his fancies are incredibly detailed, but require a great deal of liquid assets to be accomplished. These reveries symbolize his social status as an outcast since he failed experiencing his dreams as an itinerant. Moreover, in the book, it states Perry was recently released from Kansas State Penitentiary (Capote, 14), one could infer that the premise to why he collaborated with Dick was because of financial instability. Additionally, Perry was prohibited from traveling a certain distance due to probation restrictions (Capote,

A relationship is the state of being connected with another person or object. This is something that we are all known to need. Without a solid relationship with another person one’s life can change forever. Looking at a book, keeping the psychological characteristics of the characters in mind, allows one to see how relationships affect their state of mind and being. In the book In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote, the character Perry Smith is denied a relationship in his early years which changes his whole life and changes the way he interacts with people. Without a solid companion in his life Perry starts to develop a pompous attitude and a distrust toward everyone around him. This causes people to hate Perry and want to kill him. The

Following the lackluster of Dick’s perspective is Perry’s nervous and further detailed explanation. Perry knows the annoyance of his voice to Dick, but has no control over his actions. With only having one thought repeated indefinitely, one would need to vent in some manner. The major difference between the two chapters, is the last few sentences describing the obscene running over of a dog done by Dick. Dick does not mention the subsequent happenings of the innocent dog, while Perry describes the scene with horrid details and Dick’s remarks, “Boy! We sure splattered him!” (Capote 31). Perry tends to expose Dick’s heinous actions, but also has a subconscious of his own and does not know how to deal with the thought of it.

As Perry and Dick were on death row, their only position was for them to ponder about their future; what was going to happen next. Which was them having a death by hanging. Perry and Dick handled this in their own particular manner. Perry tries to starve himself as he prefers not to see what he has become. He despises that he has no control over anything. This is his method for taking matters into his own particular hands and as he trusts this is him really making the choice to die and not leaving his fate in someone else’s hands. At the point when Dick is put on death row he calmly acknowledges the sentence. Despite the fact that it appears as if he has really acknowledged it, he concocts various approaches to free himself. One of these plans

The movie In Cold Blood was made in 1967 on the 14th of December produced by Richard brooks and published by Columbia pictures Inc. This movie is about the Clutter family murder in 1959. The movie focuses mainly on the backstory and build up to the murder and the relationship of Perry and his partner in crime Richard Hickock. The movie opens up on Perry, not much information is given from the start and you are lost almost immediately. The only important information that is given is the relationship that is shared between his new friend he meets, Richard. Both have a criminal record known because they talk about their past of the things they’ve done. They begin to steal and fake checks and cash them. Layer they are found on the property of what they believe to be a wealthy family thinking they’ll strike it rich with 10,000 dollars. The scene is left off with the idea of then entering the house. It’s later explained the family was killed but not on screen. The rest of the film shows them heading toward Mexico to escape, Perry throughout that time shares his childhood or history. Occasionally flashbacks will give visual representation on his past. They head back to Vegas where they are arrested and caught for their crimes. They are hung at the end of the movie. The movie In Cold Blood gives a basic understanding of Perry 's Childhood but does not accurately tell go into

Alice Miller wrote the book The Drama of the Gifted Child, which talks about a child who wanted nothing more than to please his parents. He felt like the best thing to do is please others and be perfect in everything he set out to do. Some children do what their parents say, some don’t follow the rules at all, but there is a child who did every single thing his parents told him to do. An ideal child that parents would adore but while he did everything they wanted he lost something. Himself; is what he lost in the midst of just focusing on what his parents wanted from and for him; he stopped dealing with his own life. He put himself on the back burner to please the parents who asked for so much and even took away a lot. Miller speaks on how it is because of the child’s own self pressure to be perfect that he experienced things adults go through at the time of still being a young boy. He never let himself feel remorse for his own actions, it was only failure and when it happened he bottled it up and never dealt with those feelings. It got to the point where he locked his child like self away to later then recover it after he became an adult.