In Cold Blood

“Always certain of what he wanted from the world, Mr. Clutter had in large measure obtained it.” 

More than any other character in the novel, Herbert embodies the American Dream. Through perseverance, self-discipline, and sacrifice, he makes nearly all his dreams a reality; Capote recounts, for instance, how Clutter “labored eighteen hours a day” for years in order to transform the small amount of land he leased into the large and profitable farm he now owns outright (13). He also enjoys success in his personal life, courting and marrying Bonnie despite the social obstacles involved in a “plain farm [man]” like himself pursuing one of the “well-to-do and cultivated Foxes” (30). The idea that anyone could wish to harm a man who adheres so closely to the American ideal is part of what makes the Clutter murders so distressing to the other residents of Holcomb.

“[T]he young man was an incessant conceiver of voyages.” 

Capote introduces Perry Smith poring over a map of Mexico while waiting for Dick. Perry dreams of using the money they steal from the Clutters to travel south and hunt for lost treasure in the Sierra Madre and on sunken ships. The fancifulness of this plan is typical of Perry and says a great deal about him as a character. Perry is, in Capote’s words, “an incessant conceive of voyages”—that is, someone who constantly daydreams about escaping his sad and menial existence and trading it for something romantic and adventurousness. These same idealistic tendencies also animate Perry’s interest in art and music, as well as his dreams of the yellow bird.

“[A]fter each confinement the young mother had experienced an inexplicable despondency—seizures of grief that sent her wandering from room to room in a hand-wringing daze.” 

Bonnie Clutter’s struggles with depression are the only real sour note in the Clutters’ seemingly idyllic family life. However, these struggles are all the more significant given that they are triggered by childbirth; postpartum depression was not particularly well understood in the mid-20th century, and its association with motherhood—an experience assumed to be the most important and meaningful moment of a woman’s life—placed it in tension with that era’s celebration of the nuclear family. Thus, Bonnie’s history of depression reveals the fractures present in the notion of the American Dream. This is one reason why, after learning that something terrible happened at River Valley Farm, some people in Holcomb initially think Bonnie might be involved: “[I]t was silly, but we didn’t know the facts, and a lot of people thought maybe—on account of her spells” (81).

“But neither Dick’s physique nor the inky gallery adorning it made as remarkable an impression as his face, which seemed composed of mismatching parts.” 

Like Perry, whose short legs and small feet are at odds with his muscular upper body, Dick is “composed of mismatching parts” that hint at fundamental contradictions in his personality. In particular, the lopsidedness of Dick’s facial features offers a glimpse into the coldness and insecurity that lie beneath his affable facade and masculine bravado. Dick would resemble “an American-style ‘good kid’” if it weren’t for his facial injuries (36), which give his left eye a “venomous, sickly-blue squint that [...] warn[ed] of bitter sediment at the bottom of his nature” (35). As the novel progresses, Capote reveals that this “bitter sediment” consists of traits like manipulation and a willingness to rape underage girls. With all that said, it’s worth noting that Dick’s facial disfigurement is the result of a car accident; likewise, what Dr. Jones terms his “severe character disorder” might resulted from brain damage (340), since he sustained a severe concussion that left him with “blackout spells, periods of amnesia, and headaches” (339). 

“When your time comes, it comes. And tears won’t save you. [...] When Homer died, I used up all the fear I had in me, and all the grief, too. If there’s somebody loose around here that wants to cut my throat, I wish him luck. What difference does it make? It’s all the same in eternity.” 

Myrtle Clare is one of the few residents of Holcomb who seems unperturbed by the Clutter murders, which she suggests are essentially no different than any other kind of death. This fatalistic attitude scandalizes her own mother, and Myrtle herself acknowledges that her numbness is the result of the trauma of losing her husband. With that said, Mrs. Clare’s matter-of-factness in the face of death also stems from religious conviction, as she notes that in the full context of “eternity,” the time span of a human life is insignificant: “[I]f one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity” (80).

“How was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this—smoke, thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky?”

What makes the Clutter murders so traumatic to Holcomb is the fact that the Clutters almost perfectly embodied the American ideal: a tight-knit, churchgoing family, active in the community, headed by a man who owed his wealth to his own hard work. As a result, when Clutter’s friends burn what can’t be salvaged from the house, they feel that an implicit agreement is violated—namely, that rewards will go to those who adhere to quintessentially American virtues like self-discipline and independence. Historically, this idea is intertwined with American Protestantism, which makes the loss of faith described in this passage cut even deeper. What Clutter’s friends find so hard to accept isn’t simply that a man like Herbert could be murdered, but rather that he could die at all. The material symbols of his “plain virtue”—his wealth and goods—theoretically prove him to be one of God’s “elect,” and therefore destined for eternal life; in the face of the “annihilating sky,” however, even these religious consolations seem insufficient.

“That Dick had been married—married twice—and had fathered three sons was something he envied. A wife, children—those were experiences ‘a man ought to have,’ even if, as with Dick, they didn’t ‘make him happy or do him any good.’” 

Perry’s attachment to Dick is complex, but it centers around his perception of Dick as what he repeatedly calls “the masculine type.” This admiration may be sexual or romantic, but it also stems from Perry’s sense of himself as insufficiently masculine; although he takes pride in certain stereotypically “feminine” traits like sensitivity, he also feels so compelled to prove his masculinity that he fabricates a story about killing a man just to impress Dick. This impulse may partly reflect Perry’s complicated feelings towards his father who is, as Barbara puts it, “a real man” (211). However, it’s also a testament to the power of societal gender norms. The pressure to conform to these expectations is so intense that Perry “wants” to marry and father children even if doing so would make him unhappy.

“If the weather was fine, and especially when the days were hot and the wheat was high and ripe, he liked to drive out there and practice his draw—shoot crows, tin cans—or in his imagination roam through the house he hoped to have, and through the garden he meant to plant, and under trees yet to be seeded.” 

The house Dewey plans to build is his own version of paradise. Such a place would be an “oasis” offering refuge from the stresses of life in an even smaller city. However, part of what the Clutter murders reveal is that it isn’t possible to escape the pressures of society in this way. As isolated as River Valley Farm is, it’s still vulnerable to collision with the social forces driving Dick and Perry’s actions: poverty, norms of masculinity, and a criminal justice system focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Faced with his wife’s newfound fear of isolation, Dewey relinquishes his dreams of life in the country.

“A belief in God and the rituals surrounding that belief—church every Sunday, grace before meals, prayers before bed—were an important part of the Deweys’ existence.”

One of the more significant changes Capote allegedly made in writing about the Clutter case was to exaggerate Dewey’s importance relative to the other KBI agents. Assuming this is true, passages like the above provide one way of thinking about Capote’s choice. With his devotion to family and faith, Dewey embodies mid-century American morality. As a result, he stands in sharper contrast to the men he pursues, whose agnosticism and ambiguous sexuality are—at least within this conventional framework—tied to their criminality.

“When Perry said, ‘I think there must be something wrong with us,’ he was making an admission he ‘hated to make.’ After all, it was ‘painful’ to imagine that one might be ‘not just right’—particularly if whatever was wrong was not your own fault but ‘maybe a thing you were born with.’” 

Perry’s suggestion that there “must be something wrong” with someone who could commit murder raises complicated questions about the nature of evil. The idea that someone could be born predisposed towards violence or lacking in empathy seems to imply that some people are simply “evil” by nature. Yet debates about morality typically hinge on the idea of choice. It doesn’t seem fair to condemn a person for doing the “wrong” thing if they couldn’t have acted differently, and that is the situation that Perry essentially describes here: one in which a person, through no “fault” of their own, has a tendency to do evil things.

“[T]hey were remarkable photographs, and what made them so was Perry’s expression, his look of unflawed fulfillment, of beatitude, as though at last, and as in one of his dreams, a tall yellow bird had hauled him to heaven.” 

The above passage brings together two images closely associated with Perry’s longing for a better and fuller existence: Mexico, where he dreams he will lead a life of adventure and opulence, and the yellow bird, which embodies the more spiritual yearning for a transcendent paradise. Perry’s experience fishing off the coast of Mexico is the closest he comes in the novel to achieving his dreams, which is why he wears a look of “beatitude” when photographed by an old man taking portraits near the harbor. However, even in this moment, Perry’s happiness is incomplete. He never goes diving as he long fantasized about doing, because he is ashamed of the scars on his legs—a tangible sign of his traumatic past. 

“But the queens on ship wouldn’t leave me alone. A sixteen-year-old kid, and a small kid. [...] Jesus, I hate that stuff. I can’t stand it. Though—I don’t know. Some queers I’ve really liked. As long as they didn’t try anything.”

Perry’s sexuality is ambiguous. He mentions having sexual relationships with women—most notably with a nurse named Cookie—but his desire for them seems partly driven by a desire to conform. He describes marriage and children, for instance, as “experiences ‘a man ought to have’” (114). At other times, he expresses a disinterest in sex of all kinds. He expresses outright disdain for “people who can’t control themselves sexually” (232). Lastly, there is the question of whether Perry’s intense attachment to men like Willie-Jay and Dick is driven by sexual interest. In this passage, Perry expresses period-typical homophobic views, backtracks, and then reiterates his disgust with the idea of being pursued by another man—an ambivalence that may stem from repression of his own feelings. Further complicating matters is Perry’s description of being sexually harassed while in the Merchant Marine—a traumatic experience that could have impacted his attitude towards sex in a number of different ways.

“[I]n a sense, she was the only survivor; and what tormented her was the thought that in time she, too, would be overwhelmed: go mad, or contract an incurable illness, or in a fire lose all she valued—home, husband, children.” 

Unlike the rest of her siblings, Barbara Johnson attained the middle-class lifestyle American culture reveres; she is married with three children and lives in a “conventional suburban ranch house” that even features a white picket fence (207). What’s more, in her letter to her brother, she implies that she owes her success primarily to her own strength of character rather than to chance or help: “I truthfully feel none of us have anyone to blame for whatever we have done with our own personal lives” (161). The above passage, however, suggests that this sanctimoniousness and certainty is largely a facade. Deep down, Barbara is haunted by her knowledge of how precarious the American Dream is; as she notes, she could lose everything overnight in much the same way her seemingly well-adjusted older brother did. Her insistence that success in life is a matter of personal will and choice is therefore as much an attempt to reassure herself as it is to shame Perry.

“That, to be sure, was something he was certain he was—’a normal.’ Seducing pubescent girls, as he had done ‘eight or nine’ times in the last several years, did not disprove it, for if the truth were known, most real men had the same desires he had.” 

Dick’s emphatic insistence that he’s a normal American man is clearly at odds with reality. For one, as Dr. Jones will later note, he “shows fairly typical characteristics of what would psychiatrically be called a severe character disorder” (340). In particular, his emotional coldness and risk-taking behavior resemble what we now colloquially call sociopathy. More significant to Dick himself are his pedophilic urges. Dick stakes much of his claims to normalcy on his heterosexuality, but his feelings towards children, though directed at females, are well outside the bounds of what society considers normal or moral. To reconcile this contradiction, Dick persuades himself that his desires are typical of “real men,” and that the subject is simply taboo.

“That was half the plot; the second half was: Goodbye, Perry. Dick was sick of him—his harmonica, his aches and ills, his superstitions, the weepy, womanly eyes, the nagging, whispering voice. Suspicious, self-righteous and spiteful, he was like a wife that must be got rid of.” 

1.        The above passage is significant in terms of both Dick’s character and his relationship with Perry. By and large, Dick has never seen Perry as more than a tool; he chooses him as an accomplice because he believes him to be “a natural killer” and feels that “such a gift could, under his supervision, be profitably exploited” (63). This kind of cold and manipulative behavior is typical of Dick; although both Dick and Perry struggle to relate to others emotionally, Dick is much more inclined to use people. Dick’s perception of Perry as “womanly” and “like a wife” is also noteworthy. Perry’s sexuality is ambiguous, and Dick and Perry’s roles in the relationship mirror those conventionally associated with a husband and wife: Perry is generally quiet and submissive, deferring to Dick’s judgment or passive-aggressively needling him.

“The glory of having everybody at his mercy, that’s what excited him.” 

Although Dick may or may not be directly responsible for any of the Clutters’ deaths, he indirectly seals their fate by insisting on following through with his plan even after it becomes clear that there’s no safe in the house. In this sense, the Clutter murders are the culmination of a series of events triggered by Dick’s resentment and sense of inferiority. Dick is deeply envious of anyone more fortunate than he is; at one point in the novel, he recalls destroying a box of seashells a neighbor’s son had collected on vacation, just because he was jealous of the other boy’s experience. These tendencies are further exacerbated when Dick, unable to afford college, finds himself struggling to attain the middle-class lifestyle he feels he is owed. As a result, Dick finds the role reversal of having the well-off Clutters “at his mercy” too intoxicating to resist.  

“I frisked the girl’s room, and I found a little purse—like a doll’s purse. Inside it was a silver dollar. I dropped it somehow, and it rolled across the floor. Rolled under a chair. I had to get down on my knees. And just then it was like I was outside myself. Watching myself in some nutty movie. It made me sick. I was just disgusted. Dick, and all his talk about a rich man’s safe, and here I am crawling on my belly to steal a child’s silver dollar. One dollar.” 

The humiliation Smith describes in this passage is the factor most directly responsible for his later actions. The motion of kneeling causes him to recall crawling on the floor and to kill Herbert in response. As Perry describes it, the action is degrading in and of itself, particularly given the trivial sum of the amount of money. is Presumably, the experience calls to mind other occasions when Perry was debased or demeaned for little or no reason. On the flipside, part of what distresses Perry about the experience is how helpless his victim—Nancy—is. His disgust at being forced to steal from a “girl,” a “child,” or even a “doll” signals an awareness that he is precisely the kind of person who victimized him when he was a young boy. Lastly, Perry’s description of feeling “outside himself” anticipates Dr. Jones’s diagnosis of him as prone to dissociation in moments of high stress. At least according to Perry’s account, he’s in a similar psychological state when he kills Herbert.

“Sorrow and profound fatigue are at the heart of Dewey’s silence. It had been his ambition to learn ‘exactly what happened in that house that night.’ [...] But the confessions, though they answered questions of how and why, failed to satisfy his sense of meaningful design. The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well have been killed by lightning.” 

Dewey’s dissatisfaction in the wake of Perry’s confession stems from his prior assumptions about the crime. From the beginning, Dewey believed that he was searching for a particularly “psychopathic” killer (95)—someone who methodically and remorselessly plotted to murder the Clutters. Perry’s confession, however, forces Dewey to confront two uncomfortable truths: first, that the murderer is not exceptionally evil and “didn’t want to harm” the man he ultimately killed (281), and second, that the murders themselves were in a sense the “accidental” byproduct of a string of chance circumstances and associations. The former is an unnerving thought because it erases any hard line between killers and non-killers. It’s the lack of “meaningful design” that troubles Dewey most, perhaps because it’s a reminder of the senselessness not only of these murders but of death in general.

“But it seems to me like people are looking at me and thinking, Well, she must be to blame somehow. The way I raised Dick. Maybe I did do something wrong.”

The question of what drives a person to do evil takes on additional prominence during Dick and Perry’s trial, when their lawyers try to raise the possibility of insanity. However, given how much emphasis midcentury America placed on family life, it isn’t surprising that Mrs. Hickock feels judged. She even questions herself whether she failed in her responsibilities as a mother.

“[I]t 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.”

While talking to Sullivan, Perry finds it hard to explain why he killed the Clutters. He questions his own motives aloud, saying, “I wonder why I did it” (335). The explanation he eventually reaches is similar to the one offered by Dr. Jones, who suggests that Perry blindly lashed out in response to a triggering event—specifically, one that unconsciously recalled some prior experience of victimization. The above passage is therefore a warning about the consequences of rampant poverty, abuse, and exploitation. His word choice—“had to pay”—implies that the frustration of those who are shut out of the American Dream will inevitably have repercussions for those who enjoy it. Perry’s phrasing is also notable for the way it echoes the language of Christianity. As he describes them, the Clutters, like Jesus, atone not for their own sins but for the sins of others.  

“‘[H]e didn’t have to hit that hard. It’s unfair. [...] The whole trial. these guys don’t stand a chance.’

‘Fat chance they gave Nancy Clutter.’

‘Perry Smith. My God. He’s had such a rotten life—’

Parr said, ‘Many a man can match sob stories with that little bastard. Me included. Maybe I drink too much, but I sure as hell never killed four people in cold blood.’

‘Yeah, and how about hanging the bastard? That’s pretty goddam cold-blooded too.’” 

The above exchange, which takes place between two journalists attending Dick and Perry’s trial, cuts to the heart of the questions the novel poses about the nature of evil. First-time readers of the work are likely to assume that its title refers to the Clutter murders. As the story unfolds, however, Capote raises doubts about whether that characterization of the killings is accurate. Dick talked about killing the Clutters, but he alone wouldn’t have gone through with it. Meanwhile, Perry’s actions are inseparable from his own history as a victim of violence. In other words, the murders can’t be understood simply as the actions of two particularly evil individuals; Dick and Perry’s actions are the product of systemic social problems like poverty and child abuse. This in turn raises the question of whether capital punishment is justified, when it may be part of the problem. Although the novel never explicitly takes a stance on the death penalty, it implies that the “cold-blooded” violence of state-sanctioned killing—besides being morally questionable in and of itself—contributes to a culture that fosters violence and devalues life. 

“It seemed to Perry as though he existed ‘deep underwater’—perhaps because the Row usually was as gray and quiet as ocean depths.”

Given Perry’s former fantasies of diving off the coast of Mexico, his description of Death Row is deeply ironic. His romantic notions of immersing himself in “fire-blue seas” give way to the drab “gray” atmosphere of Kansas State Penitentiary (233). On a more symbolic level, the idea of Mexico as heaven on earth morphs into imprisonment as a form of living death. The Death Row inmates are even housed in a “dark two-storied building shaped like a coffin” (357).

“‘It’s a rotten world,’ Latham said. ‘There’s no answer to it but meanness. That’s all anybody understands—meanness. Burn down the man’s barn—he’ll understand that. Poison his dog. Kill him.’ Ronnie said Latham was ‘one hundred percent correct,’ adding, ‘Anyway, anybody you kill, you’re doing them a favor.’”

York and Latham serve as both mirrors and foils for Dick and Perry. On one hand, the spree killers’ total absence of remorse makes Perry and Dick more sympathetic by way of contrast. That said, the parallels between the two pairs of men are clear, in the dynamics of the relationships and in their motivation. The worldview that leads York and Latham to murder is implicit in Dick and Perry’s crimes; Dick and Perry also lashed out at a world they see as fundamentally cruel and unjust, though in a less conscious way. As callous as the above exchange is, Capote prompts readers to consider the kind of society that could produce such disregard for human life.