Cold Blood, Is an Award

¶ … Cold Blood, is an award winning book by Southern Novelist Truman Capote that deals with a multiple murder of a family in Kansas in 1959. The interesting thing about the book is that the reader knows the outcome at the beginning, knows who committed the crime, and yet the manner in which Capote traces the lives of the killers almost elicits sympathy (something he felt) for the killers -- even knowing they were guilt.

In Cold Blood also does not read like non-fiction; it is most certainly not a set of facts in chronological order about the killings; but more of a tale sometimes compared to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, in that it is really more of a tale of a societal aspect and the psychological of crime and punishment.

It took Capote six years to write the book; he and his childhood friend and fellow Southern Writer Harper Lee interviewed hundreds of people connected to the town, the dead Clutter family, and even the two killers, Dick and Perry (Geringer, 2011). Index of Clues- Capote never actually spells out the reasons he thinks Dick and Perry killed the Clutters; he alludes to homoerotic desires, mental illness, greed, avarice, emotions out of control and even the juxtaposition of small town America vs. The kind of dysfunctional upbringing of the two killers.

Issue Quote or Passage Interpretation The community distrusts itself and the rest of the world. This hitherto peaceful congregation of neighbors and old friends had suddenly to endure the unique experience of distrusting each other (p. 88). Clue: Murderers could be local, but likely outside of the community -- the Other. Dick's view of Perry as the weak scapegoat I'm a normal.' And Dick meant it. He thought himself as balanced…. But Perry, there was, in Dick's opinion, something wrong with little Perry (p. 108).

Clue: Dick feels Perry is mentally unbalance, but fails to see his own behavior as anything but "normal," when it is far from it Precognition that Perry is tainted They shared a doom against which virtual was no defense (p. 185). Clue: Perry's sister Barbara sees Perry also as damaged goods. Rivalry and one-upmanship going out of hand. [Dick] was holding the knife. I asked him for it, and he gave it to me, and I said, 'All right, Dick. Here goes.' But I didn't mean it.

I meant to call his bluff, make him argue me out of it, make him admit he was a phony and a coward. See, it was something between me and Dick. I knelt down beside Mr. Clutter, and the pain of kneeling -- I thought of that goddam dollar. Silver dollar. The shame. Disgust. And they'd told me never to come back.