In Cold Blood

Perry, 3 physical traits: 1. Perry has small, deformed legs and a muscular upper body as a result of a motorcycle accident. 2. He is bi-racial, half Irish and half Cherokee Indian. 3. He has...

Willie-Jay is a friend of Perry's who is being released from Kansas State Penitentiary. Willie-Jay is described as "a slender Irishman with prematurely gray hair and gray, melancholy eyes." He is...

As Truman Capote spent time with the two murderers, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, he developed relationships with the men, which enabled him to gain insights into their motives for killing the...

While on the run, Dick and Perry head south from Kansas City to Oklahoma on the 21st of November, and two days later, they cross the border into Mexico at Laredo, Texas. At this stage of their...

Al Dewey is asked to head the investigation into the Clutter case, which Capote describes as an “intricate ... apparently motiveless, [and] all but clueless” crime. Dewey was not only qualified as...

In a letter that Perry Smith's father writes to get him released from the Kansas State Penitentiary, he describes Perry's only remaining relative (besides himself) as a sister called Bobo, who...

In Cold Blood tells the cold-blooded story of two cold-blooded killers in a rather cold-blooded way, thanks to the omniscient third-person narration. In Capote's hands, this style of writing is...

It seems to me that the two main themes of In Cold Blood are the very old and traditional theme of crime and punishment and the more modern theme that nobody is safe anymore in our modern world. As...

The decidedly unreligious Perry Smith is depicted as singing the popular religious song, ‘In the Garden’ on the night when he is to commit a shocking multiple murder. Capote has his reasons for...

In his groundbreaking "nonfiction novel," Truman Capote expresses an opinion about capital punishment implicitly rather than explicitly. One way in which Capote expresses his disapproval of the...

Truman Capote employs two very different writing approaches when describing the Clutter family, who are the innocent victims of Dick and Perry, and when describing Dick and Perry, the perpetrators...

In craftingIn Cold Blood, Capote employs many tools of the novelist, shaping his non-fiction work almost as if it were a novel. Foreshadowing is used effectively and repeatedly throughout the book....

In the book In Cold Blood, author Truman Capote shows sympathy for Perry Smith, one of the two killers of the Clutter family in rural Kansas in the 1960s, in a number of places. This includes...

When the Clutter family members are murdered, the town of Holcomb reacts in a way that might surprise observers. Before the murders happened, the tiny town of Holcomb, Kansas was a remarkably...

In the book In Cold Blood, author Truman Capote chronicles the brutal murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas in the 1960's. Capote spent a great deal of time interviewing the accused...

As they make their escape to Mexico, Dick and Perry stop at stores where Dick can really "con a guy." For one, the clerk in a Kansas City, Missouri, clothing store was especially gullible because...

Perry's possessions indicate that he lives in a fantasy world. He imagines himself as a songwriter and a singer/guitarist, though he doesn't try to develop whatever musical talent he might possibly...

At the heart of In Cold Blood lies the question of how the central event—the brutal and meaningless killings of the Clutter family—could have been perpetrated by two men whose outward appearance...

I'd say that Dick and Perry are both guilty. We can argue that one or the other is "more" guilty than the other, but if we look at guilt as an absolute state (without gradation) we have to say that...

The plan was to rob and kill him. Dick and Perry had plans to gain transportation and funds by taking lethal advantage of the next person to pick them up as hitchhikers. This person happened to be...

Truman Capote, the author, had a similar upbringing in some ways to Perry Edward Smith. Like Smith, Capote's parents separated when he was young. He was sent to live with his mother's family in...

In the first chapter of In Cold Blood, Capote discusses the dreams of Herb Clutter in close proximity to Perry's dreams, setting the tone for the rest of the book and establishing the thematic role...

Bobby finds out about the murder through Mr. Ewalt, father of one of Nancy's friends, and one of the four people to discover the Clutters' bodies on the Sunday morning after their murder. Bobby has...

To do something "in cold blood" means the opposite of having done that thing in the heat of the moment. A murder committed in cold blood is one that has been thought about, planned, and then...

Early in Chapter 2 of In Cold Blood, titled "Persons Unknown," Capote reveals his attitude towards Perry and Dick's relationship with these three lines of dialogue: "Perry, baby,” Dick said, “you...

Please note: The post contains numerous questions. The eNotes Homework Help policy allows for one question per post. This answer primarily addresses the first question. One important characteristic...

Three days after the Clutters’ funeral, the wedding of one of the surviving Clutter daughters, Beverly, takes place in the same church. This is explained by the fact that the wedding had already...

Dick questions whether there isn’t something actually wrong with Perry. He bases this on his observation of Perry’s strange ways from the days when they were prison cellmates, when Perry would suck...

When Dick Hickock arrived in Las Vegas with Perry Smith (in Part Three of In Cold Blood), Dick planned to impersonate an Air Force officer. Capote writes that "It was a project that had long...

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is a narrative history about the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. In the first part, "The Last to See them Alive," Capote describes the...

Holcomb is characterized by clear blue skies and wheat plains. It is an isolated region located in West Kansas. Buildings in the town are separated by train tracks. The land is vast and has scenic...

This quote demonstrates Dick's premeditation on committing a violent crime at the Clutter residence. Though he may or may not have actually planned on killing anyone, he did plan to rape someone....

"Mean as hell" might be classified as a form of figurative language, as it is a simile (a comparison that uses "like" or "as"). This expression is a cliche, or a phrase that has become worn out...

You might say that Floyd Wells planted the seed that grew into the plot to murder the Clutter family. He was the prison cellmate who told Dick Hickock about his time working on the Clutter farm and...

Capote's journalistic novel chronicles the robbery attempt by Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, a plan that Hickock devised while incarcerated. While in a Kansas prison Hickock had...

Sympathy is probably the wrong word, as I don't know that Truman Capote actually felt sorry for Perry Smith, but he did empathize with him. That is, both personally and in his writing, he could...

They were cold-blooded killers. Capote's book is a fictionalized account of the true murders of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Richard Hickok. While they were awaiting execution on death...

While the 1967 film of the same title that stars Robert Blake as Perry Smith faithfully chronicles the journalistic fiction of Truman Capote, who was very involved in the making of this movie,...

One way to approach the issue of rationalizing or justifying the imposition of capital punishment in the specific case of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock is to cite the comments made by County...

Although the phrase "the American Dream" had a longer history, it was made popular by the writer James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book Epic of America. Originally part of the myth of the American...

Capote spends a great deal of time discussing the way in which Dick Hickock and Perry Smith live when imprisoned. They had been paroled from prison when they committed the Clutter murders, so...

Frederic Johnson (note the correct spelling of the first name) is the brother-in-law of Perry Smith, one of the two men convicted of murdering four members of the Clutter family. His wife, Barbara,...

The style of the narrative perspective is carefully crafted to allow for a fluid, compelling and immediate relation of events while also offering enough detachment in the latter sections of the...

Among the reasons so many were shocked and affected by the murder of the Clutter family was that the crime seemed to be meaningless and without motive. In the 1950s, the idea that a person or...

Dramatic irony occurs when the readers of a book know what the characters do not. In Capote's narrative, we as readers learn early on that the Clutter family—Herb, Bonnie, and their teenage...

While Truman Capote’s “nonfiction novel,” as he labeled his most well-known work, In Cold Blood, has been pilloried over the years for the author’s dissembling regarding the line between fact and...

Historiography is the study of the historical process - historical methods, biases, authorship, etc. Metafiction is also sometimes referred to as illusory fiction, fiction that may not be fiction,...

The most dynamic character is Dick. He is the one with ideas; he is the one who makes things happen. Arguably the central event of the Clutter murders is really down to him, even if it’s Perry who...

Truman Capote claimed that he had created a new literary genre with In Cold Blood. He called it a nonfiction novel. To make his book more dramatic, he employed imaginative description and imaginary...

One of he central arguments in this second chapter is the way that Smith is presented in his full psychological complexity, and how Capote explores his background and the various forces that turned...