Perry Smith has dreamed of seeing his name on newspaper headlines, wishing to be written of as a musical prodigy loved by all. It is the year 1960, and Perry can be found on newspapers all across America, but Perry isn’t known for making great music. Instead, Perry Smith is topping headlines because of a crime he committed: the murder of the Clutters. In the book In Cold Blood, the author Truman Capote gives insight into the parts of Perry never seen before; his darkest secrets, grandest aspirations, and his downfall, where the Clutter family’s fate is a result of the neglect he faced as a child, his unhealthy attachments, and the corruption of his American Dream.
The root of Perry’s issues begins when he was just a child; the age where people are most vulnerable to abuse, and the least likely to recover from it. In the very early years of his life, Perry was dealt with his mother Flo’s descent into alcoholism, along with the discourse between his father Tex and his mother. This came to a breaking point where Flo took Perry and her other children to San Francisco, away from Tex. Perry’s hatred towards his alcoholic mother and the loss of his father leads Perry to search for him: “Over the course of the next three years Perry had on several occasions run off, set out to find his lost father, for he had lost his mother as well, learned to ‘despise’ her” (Capote 131). Furthermore, the issues that Perry dealt with in his youth was observed in his adulthood as well by Dick Hickock, one of Perry’s major influences later in his life: “Perry could be ‘such a kid,’ always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep (‘Dad, I been looking everywhere, where you been, Dad?’), and often Dick had seen him ‘sit for hours just sucking his thumb and poring over them phony damn treasure guides’” (Capote 108). With no strong mother-figure and the in his life likely led to the attachment issues he struggled with later in his life, where he formed dependencies on Willie-Jay and Dick Hickock, with Dick persuading Perry into helping him kill the Clutters. Had Perry not been abused, he wouldn’t have needed to rely on Dick, preventing the Clutter family’s death. Childhood neglect …show more content…
The first most important dependency that Perry develops is an attachment to Willie-Jay. Perry grew fond of Willie-Jay because of Willie-Jay’s fondness, where he describes Perry as “a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity”’ (Capote --). He supported Perry to a fault, where even when he pointed out Perry’s extremes in mood, Perry was too swayed by his affirmations. When Willie-Jay decided to move on from prison life and start anew, Perry was lost; the hole that he tried to fill when he lost his parents was now empty again. In desperation for somebody to care for him, Dick Hickock became Perry’s new interest, where he projected his feelings towards Willie-Jay onto Dick. If Perry wasn’t abused in his childhood, and clinging onto any sort of love that could be discovered, he wouldn’t have developed these unhealthy dependencies on others. It is especially unfortunate that Perry came to Dick, as Dick is the one who developed the plan to kill the
The root of Perry’s issues begins when he was just a child; the age where people are most vulnerable to abuse, and the least likely to recover from it. In the very early years of his life, Perry was dealt with his mother Flo’s descent into alcoholism, along with the discourse between his father Tex and his mother. This came to a breaking point where Flo took Perry and her other children to San Francisco, away from Tex. Perry’s hatred towards his alcoholic mother and the loss of his father leads Perry to search for him: “Over the course of the next three years Perry had on several occasions run off, set out to find his lost father, for he had lost his mother as well, learned to ‘despise’ her” (Capote 131). Furthermore, the issues that Perry dealt with in his youth was observed in his adulthood as well by Dick Hickock, one of Perry’s major influences later in his life: “Perry could be ‘such a kid,’ always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep (‘Dad, I been looking everywhere, where you been, Dad?’), and often Dick had seen him ‘sit for hours just sucking his thumb and poring over them phony damn treasure guides’” (Capote 108). With no strong mother-figure and the in his life likely led to the attachment issues he struggled with later in his life, where he formed dependencies on Willie-Jay and Dick Hickock, with Dick persuading Perry into helping him kill the Clutters. Had Perry not been abused, he wouldn’t have needed to rely on Dick, preventing the Clutter family’s death. Childhood neglect …show more content…
The first most important dependency that Perry develops is an attachment to Willie-Jay. Perry grew fond of Willie-Jay because of Willie-Jay’s fondness, where he describes Perry as “a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity”’ (Capote --). He supported Perry to a fault, where even when he pointed out Perry’s extremes in mood, Perry was too swayed by his affirmations. When Willie-Jay decided to move on from prison life and start anew, Perry was lost; the hole that he tried to fill when he lost his parents was now empty again. In desperation for somebody to care for him, Dick Hickock became Perry’s new interest, where he projected his feelings towards Willie-Jay onto Dick. If Perry wasn’t abused in his childhood, and clinging onto any sort of love that could be discovered, he wouldn’t have developed these unhealthy dependencies on others. It is especially unfortunate that Perry came to Dick, as Dick is the one who developed the plan to kill the