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Essay about Perry Smith The Serene Man with the Explosive Temper

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Perry Smith The Serene Man with the Explosive Temper Perry Smith is perhaps the nicest, most gentle-hearted man I've ever met in my life. If he and I were to have met under different circumstances, I would never have hazarded a guess that this kind man could be a cold-blooded killer. He's such a gentle man that it startles me to think that a man such as he would ever so much as touch a hair on a human head. However, it is the story of his past that lends credence to the fact that he slaughtered four members of the Clutter family. Built up emotions of hatred and rejection have been bottled up inside of him for so long, that he sometimes explodes with little cause. Although he appears soft on the outside, it is the build up of emotion …show more content…

They enjoyed seeing their parents perform, but they were forced to live in a truck with little to eat as they traveled the country hunting work on the rodeo circuit. During the Depression in the 1930s, the family moved to Nevada in search of work. Tex John Smith, Perry's father, began moonshining for money. It was around this time that Flo Buckskin, Perry's mother, began drinking. The marriage ended in a huge fight "in which horsewhips and scalding water and kerosene lamps were used as weapons." Flo ran away with the children. John later went to San Francisco to get his children back. Perry was the only one that showed any love for his father. After the divorce, John was granted full custody, but he took only Perry and put the other children in foster care because he could not care for all of them. Perry got into trouble in school and was in a fight. His father summarily removed him from the school, and they left town. Perry says that although he wanted to go to school, his father wouldn't let him, "because he didn't want [him] to learn anything, only how to tote and carry for him." Perry joined the Marines in the Second World War, and he went to Korea, where he displayed signs of his sinister side by throwing a Korean man over a bridge for no reason. He returned from the war and went to find his father in Alaska, where they

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