Sunday, July 25, 2010
Pathos
Capote seems to paint Perry in a more sympathetic light than Dick. He seems sensitive and even kind at points; however, by the end you find out that Perry committed all four murders. Did that surprise you? Did you sympathize with Dick more than Perry at any point? Or did you not "buy into" any of the kind characterizations? Explain.
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Thanks to Capote's writings, even after I found out that Perry committed all the murders, I still felt for him. I understood that he didn't have the same sanity that Dick had because of how he grew up and how he responded to his situations. I never sympathized with Dick more than Perry because he knew what was right but did things that went against it, often getting drunk to loosen the grip of what is right. Dick is a guy who wants to live life with minimum honest work; but Perry is a guy who, with good friends backing him up, could have a steady honest job.
ReplyDeleteYes, of course, most anyone who really got into the book was surprised that Perry committed all of the murders, truthfully I was hoping very much that Dick committed all of them because Capote painted this picture for Dick that just made him unlikable to me, as a girl, because he didn't really seem to care all that much about his life. He wasted everything that came to him because he could always fall back on his family, who unconditionally loved him no matter what. But Perry, he has lost so much and is just getting by. I wanted Perry to get out clean start the new and happy life that he was deprived of so long ago.
ReplyDeleteYes, I did sympathize for Perry and always much more than I sympathized for Dick. I agree with the first comment when it explained that through out the book Capote makes clear how Dick constantly is wasting the last of his money on getting drunk which is probably a way to accept the evil that he knows he did. However, Perry is not affected in the same way as Dick, he acts as if he did nothing wrong and that is exactly what the psych evaluation proved when the doctor talked about Perry. I was surprised that Perry ended up killing all of the Clutter's but when he explains why he killed them it sounds like he felt he had to. I feel that Perry was wrongfully treated at the trial due to his mental health that was not made public when it should have been and that also made me sympathize for him.
ReplyDeleteAbby G
I was surprised that Perry committed all the murders. Before the events of the crime were revealed, I viewed Perry as a lost soul who could only have relationships with criminals. Because of this, I believed Perry was pretending to be tough but truly just tagged along out of loneliness. My thoughts were supported by Perry constantly striving to impress Dick and specifically the false story about killing a black man named King on page 112. I also assumed that Dick killed the Clutter family while Perry, being much more compassionate, made the victims more comfortable by laying the two women in their beds, putting a pillow behind Kenyon's head, and putting down a mattress box for Mr. Clutter to lay on as described on page 103. I never sympathized with Dick because throughout the novel he committed other crimes (e.g. writing bad checks, stealing), had a tendency to sexually harass young girls, and seemed unkind.
ReplyDeletePaige H.
I was surprised that Perry committed to all the four murders. The first time Dick mentioned that Perry did it, I thought that he was just blaming Perry so that he can abandon the situation. I thought this because Dick’s attitude seems carefree and easy-going that it makes the reader feel as if he was nonchalant about the crime the murders committed to. He also gives the reader the sense that he would do anything to get his way (ex. Dick kept forcing Mr. Clutter to tell where the safe was, even when it was obvious that the Clutters did not have a safe), he follows his guts, and his recklessness proves that he cannot manage bad situation. Perry, on the other hand, manages things with his mind. Perry, having the more sympathetic past compared to Dick and the way he follows his morals, makes the reader compassionate towards Perry.
ReplyDeleteYes, I was suprised that Perry was the murderer. Perry is described as the more dependent of the two, so we think of him as weak, and not able to take care of himself, while Dick seems the more independent of the two. Plus with Dick's fast living style of life and the stealing and the past crimes he committed, naturally we think it was him who commited the murders. He acts tough and carefree, so it would seem as if he would be the kind of guy who would commit a murder just for money and not have a second thought. We sympathize with Perry because we learn of his messed up past, and the fact that he is lonely and has no family left, (aside from his sister who doesn't even care for him) and how really the only person he can depend on is Dick.
ReplyDeleteKelsey J.
I do sympathize a bit with Perry just because he led such a hard life. All his siblings commited some type of suicide, except for one whom he hates. His mother drowned in her own vomit and his father was unable to properly take care of him. This does help me sympathize with him, and does make him out to be sensitive. But, in reality, it doesn't surprise me that he'd be the one to commit the murders. Perry was mentally unstable due to his past, so when he was killing the Clutters, maybe, in a way, he was also erasing the terrible past he led. So, in my opinion, it'd make more sense if Perry had been the one to commit the murders. Dick seemed like nothing more than a coward also, so it would be like him to leave it to Perry to do the dirty work.
ReplyDeleteWhile I never sympathized with Dick as much as I did with Perry, Capote did manage to get me to sympathize more than I thought. Though, more than what I sympathized with Dick, I sympathized with his family.
To me though, the aurthor didn't put as much effort into Dick as he did into Perry. Capote wrote chapters and chapters and Perry's life, but only bothered with Dick towards the end. So, to me, it seemed that Perry was also the aurthor's preferred.
-Mariela V.
Keep up the good work! You are noticing how Capote tries to make you sympathetic to Perry. Keep reading and writing critically.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Kasper
Throughout the book, I always sympathized with Perry more. Even though the fact that Perry committed all the murders surprised me, it did not change the fact that I liked him better out of the two. The author spends so much time showing Perry as the kinder of the two that even after realizing what had happened, the reader’s feelings are already set. I was honestly surprised the Perry could commit the murders since he would cry just by listening to a song. I would have thought that he was too kind-hearted for him to have done it personally. The author even specifies that Dick knew Perry was more kind hearted when he said, “But Perry, little old big-hearted Perry…” Perry’s life also seemed the more twisted out of the two, most of his family committed suicide, so I sympathized with him. Dick on the other hand, still had his parents who cared for him and could have easily chosen a righteous path. Perry seemed more like a kid who did what he was told while Dick was the one who commanded, making the reader sympathize with Perry.
ReplyDeleteJasmine N.
When i found out that Perry did commit all four murders, it did not surprise me. I knew that Perry had something lurking beneath especially when Willy-Jay talked about Perry saying that he existed "between two superstructures,one self-expression and the other self-destruction." and that he had a "Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion." But still i sympathize for him more than Dick, because of his past and after all of that i understand Perry being insane, with his brother committing suicide, his sister "falling out" of a window, and his only remaining sibling not wanting Perry know her location. At some points i did sympathize with Dick more, because at moments Perry had this sort of arrogance in his way of thinking like when he corrects Dick's grammar, even though Dick doesn't mind, it sounds as if though Perry is better than him.
ReplyDeleteTo find out that it was Perry, and not Dick, who committed all the murders was a complete surprise to me. I did sympathize for Perry much more than I did for Dick for that fact that Capote makes it obvious that Dick is the rougher one out of the two and would be thought to do something that horrific. Before knowing that it was indeed Perry who committed the murders, Capote made Perry seem as if he was just along for the ride and he was pretending to be someone who he was not. It was as if he was putting on a disguise to fit in with Dick as well as other criminals. For example, when he went along throughout the book talking about the black guy that he killed, I didn’t really “buy into” that because I figured that this was a way for him to feel just as tough and bad as Dick.
ReplyDelete-Braelyn B.
For me, it was not as big of a surprise to find out that Perry was the murder as one would suspect. Even though Dick was brave until the end I still thought he was too cowardly to actually pull the trigger. Even after I found out Perry was the actual killer I still found myself more sympathetic towards Perry because he truly did regret what he did. He refused to eat, communicated with others, and apologized in his final words. I feel that he also truly did do the killing to spare Dick's mother and that he had not wanted to kill or even harm any of the Clutter family but was unfortunately a victim of Dick's pressure and falsely-brave attitude and Perry, as a result of this, acted rashly in killed the four family members.
ReplyDelete-Collin B.
It didn't come as a shock to me that Perry was the one who had committed the murders. In the first section of the novel Dick explains that Perry is "a natural killer" (Capote 55) but I also had a much easier time sympathizing with Perry than Dick. I believe this can be credited to the way Capote displays the characters when we first meet them, he shines a light on Dick's clam confidence in the crime's success, and like Jasmine said shows Perry "following orders".
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the sections narrated by Dick/Perry, I always found Perry a more likable character. Perry's disapproval of Dick's child molestation problem suggested he had at least some sense of right and wrong, however small, while Dick is never shown to find anything wrong with his actions. I think part of the reason we find Perry so likable is not that Perry is a better man, but that when held in comparison to Dick, in our minds Perry seems like a more "civilized" choice. For example, Perry is shown to be the more educated of the two, and is always searching for ways to improve his intelect while Dick seems completely satisfied with his lack of book learning. Dick is shown to be brutal, raping young girls and running over countless dogs just for the fun of it, making Perry's "smaller crimes" less noticable. Perry shows regret, and displays the desire for acceptance all humans possess when he told Dick he beat a man to death just so Dick would like him. This need to be accepted makes him more relatable than Dick. All throughout the book Perry is more sympathetically portrayed so by the time we actually find out what happened that night, we expect Dick to be the one who shot the Clutters and are surprised when it is ,in fact, Perry who kills them all and Dick, the one we previously belived to be the brutal one, who "didn't have the guts".
ReplyDeleteThrough out the book i was always more sympathitic towards Perry, Capote takes the time to build up Perry's background by explaining is rough childhood in segments leading the reader to believe the he is a tortured soul, and we don't have the story of Dicks background so he is paint as the tough cold charecter. I was truly surprised that it was Perry who killed all four of the Clutter's but it didn't make me feel any less for him, Capote had already persuaded the reader to feel more sympathy for Perry.
ReplyDeleteIt surprised me in the end of the book to find out that Perry was the one who did kill all four family members because throughout the book Dick was the one who seemed brutal and he seemed like he was the one who insisted on killing the family. Capote, throughout the book created sympathy for Perry in the sense that the only family he had left were his father and his sister and how they wanted nothing to do with him. One thing that didn't make it much of a shock was in the book where it explained where Perry didn't appreciate his dad as much as his dad appreciated him and how he wished his sister was in the house when the crime took place, which made me think that maybe Perry isn't as sensitive as I thought he was.
ReplyDelete-Ashley Mambru-
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that when I learned Perry was the one who actually killed the Clutters, I was not surprised. While I felt deeply sympathetic for him, Perry always came across as less attached to the world, as well as almost bipolar, making him, in my mind, more capable of killing someone. That is not to say Dick was unable of killing someone; I just thought Perry was more likely. A part of me wonders if Capote painted Perry as such a sympathetic character because he was the one who did the actual killing. I felt intensely sympathetic for Perry; he seemed like someone who could have been a very decent person under different circumstances and a different upbringing. However, at no point during the novel did I feel sympathetic for Dick. In all honesty, I downright disliked him. It seemed to me that with every little thing he did, he became more unsympathetic, from running down an old dog with his car, to writing hot checks his family would have to pay, to attempting to seduce a young girl. Not even the psychiatric analysis of him at the end built up any sympathy for him.
ReplyDeleteEmilia K
I disagree with Rachel E saying that Dick saw no wrong in his own actions. When Dick was attempting to seduce a young girl, it is commented that his pedophile tendencies are something he is 'sincerely ashamed' of. If he believed that he was 'right' in his attraction to young girls, he would not be ashamed of it, and not try to hide it. Also,after writing numerous bad checks, Dick briefly experiences what can only be called guilt, knowing that his Father will try to pay the checks off despite being in a tough financial situation. So, what I'm trying to say is, I think Dick does have a sense of what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'; he just chooses to ignore it.
ReplyDeleteI was so surprised to learn that Perry was the murderer. I always assumed Dick did it, sense it was Dick’s idea and he always seemed like the more cold-hearted one. Despite this though, I never really sympathized with Dick till the very end of the book, in particular pg. 334. He says things about his mother like, “I wish she would [move to Florida]. Then she wouldn’t have to go through this ordeal.” Hearing him care about his mother made me come close to tears and had a big impact of my feelings for Dick. Slowly, but surely, my sympathy for Perry is going away. I think Dick sums up my feeling for Perry very nicely when he says, “Sometimes you got to feel sorry for Perry… Aw, the hell with him. It’s mostly every bit his own fault.” (pg. 335)
ReplyDelete~Kendall R.
I was surprised to find out that Perry committed all of the murders. You'd have thought since it was Dick's idea for the crime that he would commit it, but this was not the case. I don't sympathize with Dick at all he came up with this idea and he planned it out. He could have stopped this but he didn’t and Dick was saner of the two of them. Dick is as much at fault as Perry is for the murders, he planned it out basically made Perry join him in this and went through with this and he is just as evil as Perry is.
ReplyDeleteYes I was completely shocked that Perry committed all four murders. Dick being painted as such a dark character by Capote, a rapists and not sensible towards life, seemed as though he would be complete fault for the murders. I did not sympathize for Dick at all in the novel; he had a true loving family and had a conscience of his doings when he wasted it all on the night of the tragedy. Perry on the other hand had a rough life and actually had a psychiatric analysis that claimed he was “insane”. I truly wanted Perry to have a new “normal” life or an opportunity to have one, like Dick. Towards the end of the novel Perry attempted to make a life change by bonding with Mrs. Mier and nature, the squirrel. The life change was too late and sadly Perry was put to death along with Dick.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised that Perry killed the Clutters. If I was to suspect anybody it would have Dick. I mean he came up with the plan. This just showed how much of a coward Dick really was. Never once did I sympathize with Dick as much as I did with Perry. The treatment Perry got as a kid made you feel for him more than anything that happened in Dicks life.
ReplyDeleteI love how Capote is able to manipulate his reader in this book. He succeeds in controlling how the reader feels about every character by how he describes them. While reading In Cold Blood I realized Capote's use of pathos which was persuading me to have pity for Perry because he had lived a difficult life. However, this realization only made me more resistant to the sympathy Capote wanted me to feel. I made a conscious effort to scorn Perry despite Capote's rhetoric, and therefore was not surprised when I discovered that Perry had been the sole murderer of the Clutters. I felt that challenges in life are not excuse enough to become a criminal, no matter how miserable they may be. (Which I admit is incredibly narrow minded.) Notwithstanding my attempts to block out all sympathy for Perry, Capote won over my sincere pity in the end through his heart-wrenching descriptions of Perry on Death Row. I am no match for Capote's literary brilliance.
ReplyDeleteJaclyn M.
It was definitely a surprise to find out that Perry had committed all four murders. Capote has an amazing skill for getting his readers to think one thing, then suddenly, but smoothly transition into the exact opposite.
ReplyDeleteAt no point did I sympathize more with Dick than with Perry. It upset me when I read, from Dick's point of view, how annoyed he was with accomplice because Perry is a very likable character.
I believe it would be safe to say that I bought into the kind and lonely characterizations of Perry.
Amanda P.
I was definantly surprised to find out that Perry commited all four murders, and though it may be a bit wrong to some people, I still feel more compassion for Perry than Dick because of the way Capote made the reader see his character. Perry, to me, seemed like the sensitive one, and the way Dick kept talking about "the perfect shot" earlier in the book and Perry's apparent guilt for what they had done, it seemed like Perry was just along for the ride for Dick.
ReplyDeleteI never really was able to sympathize with Dick because Capote made him out to be just a hard character, everywhere from his facial features, to his 'masculine' and 'tough' physical appearance and nature.
I never believed (before I found out who REALLY murdered all four) that Perry just sat back and let Dick do all of it, just for the simple fact that I observed things that were said in the book by Perry. Like, for example, he was 'good with knots' because he was in the military, and the the knots at the murder scene were described as a "very complicated, artful peice of work".
But I think most can agree that pretty much everyone who read this book was fooled by Capote.
Courtney H.
Capote's characterization of Perry completely led me to believe that Dick was the cold-blooded killer. Never once did I think that the seemingly innocent Perry brutally murdered all four Clutter family members. Dick was portrayed as the hard and fast type, managing very little emotion, and extremely manipulative. Toward the beginning of the novel, Dick is contemplating the value of Perry in his plot thinking "he had... not considered him worth cultivating until... Perry described a murder, telling how... he had killed a colored man... beaten him to death with a bicycle chain (Capote 55)." Even at that point, I was floored trying to imagine Perry, feeble and superstitious, committing such an atrocity. Capote successfully illustrates Perry as a sensitive and weak sort of child.
ReplyDeleteKristen H.
I, as most people have also said, did not in any way suspect that Perry was the murderer of all four Clutters. He seemed just as humane as anybody in many parts of the story.
ReplyDeleteI could not feel myself sympathizing with Dick at any point in the story. I had read in a news article once that it was common for serial killers to take a sort of pleasure in killing animals. At some point in section two, Dick and Perry are driving down a road with a truck full of goods purchased using bad checks. Apparently at random points, Dick would go out of his way to hit and kill stray dogs. While this could have been just coincidence, is seems much more like to me to be an attempt to throw the reader off of the trail. Capote may have been attempting to paint Dick in a much less appealing light to make any person think that he had to be the most inhumane of the duo, thus obviously he had to have the mind of a cold blooded killer.
While I don't believe that I ever felt any real sympathy for Perry, I do believe that out of the two, most readers found themselves to be able to associate more with him than with his accomplice.
-JR Bryant
I agree with what Amanda said about Capote being very skilled at making the readers think one thing when in truth it was the opposite. When I learned that Perry was the one that committed all four murders I was surprised. I found Perry to be more humane, kind, and sensitive. I sympathized with Perry because he had such a tough life and couldn't relate to anyone. In the beginning I suspected that Dick had been the one commit all four murders because he seemed tougher and more capable of committing the murders. I completely bought into Capote's kind characterizations of Perry.
ReplyDeleteI too agree with Amanda and Ashley. When I found out that Perry did in fact commit all four murders I was surprized. I had always suspected that Dick was the one that committed the murders because I felt that Perry was too kind and soft to do anything of that magnitude. Dick was always the one that was the outlaw and down right mean. He would steal, he would mistreat women, and he was always treating people bad. But after I learned that Perry did actually commit the murders I felt no sympathy. To me Perry made the choice to kill the Clutters. He didn't have to but he chose to, and I personally have no tolerance for anybody who would do such a thing.
ReplyDelete-Beaux Pace
When Perry revealed the truth that he had, in fact, killed all four of the Clutters as Dick claimed, I was reasonably surprised. However, in retrospect, I saw the signs that portrayed Perry as the killer he turned out to be. Even though Dick had seemed the more vicious of the two men, Dick’s earlier prognosis of Perry helped to lessen the “shock” in Perry’s admission. After hearing Perry’s story of killing a black man for no apparent reason, “Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, ‘a natural killer’─absolutely sane, but…capable of dealing, with or without motive, the coldest-blooded deathblows” (Capote 53). Despite the fact that Perry later admitted that the story was made up in order to impress Dick, what Dick said about Perry rang true after the confessions revealed the happenings during the Clutter murders. Additionally, a second “analysis” made of Perry by Dick supplied another side of Perry resembling the behavior of a ruthless killer. “In some ways old Perry was ‘spooky as hell’…He could slide into a fury ‘quicker than ten drunk Indians’. And yet you’d never know it” [said Dick]…For however extreme the inward rage…Perry remained a cool young tough, with eyes serene and slightly sleepy” (Capote 104). Such descriptions depict the soulful, sensitive guitarist in a much harsher light, though effectively justifying the fact that Perry is in reality very capable of killing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Capote manages to counteract this discovery by pairing it with the professional evaluation provided by Dr. Joseph Satten, consequently generating sympathy once more for Perry. As Dr. Satten later stated, Perry “was under a mental eclipse [when he cut Herb Clutter’s throat]”, thus believing himself to be “destroying…a key figure in some past traumatic configuration: his father? The orphanage nuns who had derided and beaten him? The hated army sergeant?...One of them or all of them” (Capote 294). Through Dr. Satten’s examination of Perry, Capote conveys the belief that Perry is nonetheless not to be blamed for his crime, as he was mentally affected by the abusive relationships he endured in his past.
Nonetheless, there was at least one point in the story where I also felt sympathy towards Dick. After passing day’s worth of “hot paper”, Dick becomes grave, regretful of his actions and the effect they will have on his parents, saying, “What about Dad? I feel─oh, Jesus, he’s such a good old guy. And my mother─well, you saw her. What about them? Me, I’ll be off in Mexico. Or wherever. But they’ll be right here when those cheques start to bounce. I know Dad. He’ll want to make them good… [But] he can’t ─ he’s old and he’s sick, he ain’t got anything” (Capote 95). At this point, Dick clearly displays a show of human decency previously lacking in him, though not enough to have carefully considered the consequences before attempting to write bad checks. However, maybe it was this lingering close relationship of love and respect for his parents that prevented him from doing what Perry single-handily perpetrated: killing the Clutter family.
-Hannah C.
Even with Perry's "sensetive side", I was not very surprised when i found he actually murdered them all. With Perry's past and his records, I could understand why he was the only one. I have no sympathy for Dick though. He had a perverted mind that disgusted me, and he planned the murder and was the reason it happend. Though Perry was the one with the blood on his hands, Dick was just as low as Perry.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t find it that surprising that Perry committed all the murders because he seemed to be the most unhinged due to his unstable childhood and his exposure to violence as a young kid. Also, since Capote spent so much time explaining Perry’s past and how hard his childhood was, it seemed like he was trying to justify how Perry could do what he did. I did sympathize with Perry throughout the book much more than Dick because of the problems Perry had to go through. Even after I found out Perry committed all four murders I still felt for him because it was like life wanted him to fail, he had no choice, that’s just what was meant to be. Dick, on the other hand, lived a seemingly easy life, so he had no excuse for doing wrong.
ReplyDelete-Tori J.
I was honestly suprised that perry killed all four of them. I had to re-read the first 110-120 pages of the book when the characters in question stories were laid out. From how angry dick always seams and how "in-control" he loved to be, I thought dick would want the massacer of the familey done his way. Yet when I come to think about it I suppose there is some Foreshadowing of it. Seeing that perry isnt quite right in the head. Heck anyone that really got as weirded out as I did when Perry was insistant on buying black stockings for the crime, and Dick was against it. I dont know, maybe just my opinion. Perrys past dose allow somthing of this nature" maybe not to this extream" to happen though. Dicks dose not. Yet i'm honestly still supirsed.
ReplyDeleteI was very caught off guard when I read that Perry was the one who commited all of the murders. Dick was always the one who seemed like the real criminal in the story with all his anger, and Perry the kind of quiet wrong place wrong time kind of guy. Though Perry does show a sort of compasion during the murders making everyone comfortable and making sure that Dick didn't lay a hand on Nancy. In the end I would have thought that Dick would be the one to kill them all seeing that he was the one who originally came up with the idea and he was the one who said they had to kill all of the witnesses. Capote just decided to make Perry and Dick seem as though they were something completly different than they were and in the end brought forth their true colors.
ReplyDeleteAmanda M.
I did not buy into the characterization of Perry at all. I just cannot believe, as the reader, that such opposite personalities could ever coexist in a human being. What is he, a beautiful sensitive soul that cries when something tugs on his heartstrings or is he an angry killer that only cares about himself? I understand that there have been numerous killers [such as the BTK] who were family men and also cold blooded murderers. But I have always imagined these people to be excellent actors. In this book Perry is painted to be a genuinely sensitive person. No genuinely sensitive person could EVER commit murder. This is why I do not believe in the character of Perry.
ReplyDeleteDick however, now there's a character I can believe. A criminal that believes that nothing he does is wrong. He is the stereotypical criminal [a greedy, smooth-talking pedophile/murderer]. I didn’t sympathize with Dick or Perry because both of them came willingly to commit this murder by themselves and for that reason I have no sympathy for their outcome. I wasn’t surprised when Perry was exposed for killing all four victims. I felt that Perry was the sidekick that was trying to “prove” himself worthy to his master [Dick]. Dick didn’t have a problem with this because he was too good for killing [like he was too good for Mexican wages]. By the end of the book I still did not believe Perry’s character and I had no feelings of sympathy for their characters.
Bethany S.
I was surprised at the end of the book to find that Perry had actually murdered the family.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I still sympathized with Perry more, even at the end of the book, because he was more honest than Dick was. Dick always seemed meaner. He was the one that said "No witnesses", while Perry actually thought about letting the family live. Dick was also sexually attracted to young girls, while Perry was disgusted by that kind of stuff.
He stopped Dick from raping Nancy! He didn't have to do that, but he knew it was the right thing to do.
The fact that he made the Clutters comfortable, before they were killed, shows that maybe he didn't really want to kill them at first, but really had no choice in the end.
I was surprised when I found out Perry committed all four murders of the Clutters. Throughout the book, Dick seemed the more likely person to kill another, he always had a need to be in control of the situation and seemed very confident in himself. He was callous compared to the sensitive, silent Perry who, while growing up in an unorthodox environment for a child, was very uncertain of himself and is eager to please. I did not feel sympathy for Dick at any point in the book because he had a well off childhood and adolescence and chose to make bad decisions while Perry on the other hand, because of his upbringing, was practically thrown into situations where he was bound to get into trouble until it just became habit, almost natural.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised that Perry had committed all four murders but I was also not surprised, Perry is very intelligent and at times thoughtful. His aspirations are very real and touching. But the way he was as a child, reckless and always getting into trouble, and the way his sister describes him "with your attitude of feeling everyone is stupid & uneducated & un-understanding...But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellow man" (Capote 142), it's not much of a surprise, its almost as if Perry is unfeeling. I did not in anyway throughout the novel sympathize with Dick, His arrogant nature and perverted train of thoughts detered me from him instantly.
ReplyDeleteMadeleine G.
I really liked Perry as a character. Even up to his death he was one of my favorites. Capote described Perry as a tortured soul, which i think appealed to alot of the readers. We wanted to feel sorry for him because he was weak and seemed to be trapped in a predicament he wouldn't be able to escape. In the end I was not surprised that Perry commited all four murders because as we read more about Perry we dicovered that he would do or say just about anything to be recieved as an equal. It also aggravated me that Perry kept along with Dick. I disliked that Dick used Perry. Dick was very selfish and unforgiving which really bothered me because Perry sort of looked up to Dick because of his brute masculinity.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Perry committed all four of the murders did not in the least bit surprise me. While Capote tends to shed a more sympathetic light upon the man, the ability to kill another human being remains within both Perry and Dick. With the latter, that ability is more apparent. His obsession with control, his slick, sly way of dealing with situations, and the fact that he claims to love his family yet buries them in more debt completely deters any sympathy I could have felt for him. The apathy, I believe, may perhaps be the driving characteristic Dick possesses that allows him to take a life. Perry, on the other hand, while a 'kinder soul', one more artistic and thoughtful, lacking the twisted perversion Dick possesses, still managed to eradicate sympathy. An externalist by nature, Perry is constantly shoving the blame upon others and his environment. His kindness fools you. Spurred by frustration and hatred, Perry could easily commit murder. At no point in the story did I truly find myself pitying either man.
ReplyDeleteAlexis A.
The fact that Perry did kill all four of the Clutters was shocking, but it make a whole lot of sense. The reason it make so much sense is that Perry had a horrid life filled with neglect, from his mother and siblings,and trauma, all but one sibling killing themselves. I don't think i ever sympathized more with Dick than Perry once in the whole novel. The reasons being, one Perry, throughout the book, is portrayed as the person who just got the "short end of the stick", and two Dick seemed harsher and less sensitive than Perry making it harder to cope with what he has been through.
ReplyDeleteI was really surprised that Perry killed all four in the clutter family, but looking back, Its forseeable. Perry was just influenced by Dick, as its descibed in the book "A psychological accident" Perry could only kill if somebody like Dick pushed him to, Dick saw this and manipulated him. Thats why I could never sympathize with Dick, He's the one who planned, and short of the actual action of killing the Clutter's, Dick was the driving force behind the crime. My pity lies with Perry, I see him as someone who just never learned the things in life that we take for granted.
ReplyDelete-Colton Larsen
The sympathetic story of Perry's life in my opinion, was very depressing to know but didn't in fact suprise me that he killed the Clutter family after such a past. All of the hardships that he went through brought him up to be a murderer and then not feel much about it. The only part of Perry I was sorry about was that he had a harsh childhood, but I also at one point was sorry for Dick as well when he had to die even though he didn't commit any murder. Yet the fact that he did direct and plan the entire killing didn't leave me sorry for very long.
ReplyDeleteSydney Garcia
I was changing who I sympathized with more throughout the story constantly. Though for most of the story, I mainly aligned more with Perry.
ReplyDeleteHis background obviously was the harder one, what with his mom taking his siblings away, and all of them barring one killing themselves. When it was revealed that he was the murderer of all four of the Clutters, I didn't really feel less sorry for Perry, but as the book went on, I felt sympathetic to Dick, because he was being punished for four counts of murder even though he was truly not guilty of any of them.
The only moment where I was shocked at the revealing of the murders, was when Dick was first confronted, and with next to no hesitation, instantly claimed that Perry was the killer of all four. I was convinced that he was lying to save himself, and to see him blame Perry for all of them made liking Dick much harder to do.
Travis Coe
I was very surprised that Perry had killed the whole family. That was a turn I definitely did not expect. While I read I had a hard time sympathizing with Dick at all. Dick came off as someone who was rude and never worried or felt bad for what had happened. While you could somewhat connect and feel sorry for Perry. With all of the struggles he had gone through in the past it made you feel bad he was never able to get his life straight and rely on himself.
ReplyDeleteIt completely shocked me to find out that Perry had actually committed the murders of the entire Clutter family, because of the way Truman Capote portrayed him. Throughout the entire novel, Capote wrote of traumatizing events in Perry's past, which made me subconsciously create excuses for his behavior as a criminal.
ReplyDeleteIn my mind, Dick would have been the mastermind of the Clutter murders, with Perry tagging along just to seek Dick's approval (just as he had with the feigned story of murdering a black man).
-Angela Boyrie
When I found out that Perry committed all four murders I was not surprised because even Dick knew what he Perry was capable of. You can see he knew what Perry could do when he "gradually decided that Perry possessed unusual and valuable qualities...Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, 'a natural killer'-absolutely sane, but conscienceless, and capable of dealing, with or without motive, the coldest-blooded deathblows" (Capote 55). I sympathized with Dick at some point because he could never finish the job, that in the end he didn't go through with it. In my opinion I think that they feed off of each other to commit the crime and that they would of never done the horrific crime by themselves but rather that they needed each other to "back each other up". So when I say that I sympathized with Dick I did so knowing that he was still responsible for the murders as much as Perry was for they both where needed for the crime to be committed.
ReplyDeleteDalton K.
I was surprised that Perry committed all four murders, but I also feel that had Dick not been there, Perry would not have killed anyone. Not only was the whole scheme Dick's idea, but Perry confessed to feeling pressured by Dick and being influenced by his no-mercy, "no witness" attitude. If I ever felt sympathy for either of them, it was Perry. However, it was not long lasting or deeply felt; he was after all, a murderer. His unfortunate past and obvious selfdoubt had me originally making excuses for him, but eventually I had to decide that if everyone with difficult pasts did what he did, crime rates would jump and human population would decline drastically. What kept me from ever feeling sympathy for Dick was his incessant blase attitude and refusal to turn from his illegal ways; really his desire to do immoral things, such as steal and nurture his pedophiliac tendencies.
ReplyDelete-Zoe Bulls
I wasn't surprised that Perry committed the murders at all. While the author does make him seem to be kinder, and more sensitive, he had some problems that surfaced at times.
ReplyDeleteHis childhood was extremely traumatic. He grew up with no sense of stability, no one to show him right from wrong. His parents were terrible role models - whenever times got bad, they resorted to drinking, or physical abuse. When Perry and his father fought after they had built the lodge, Perry's father even pointed a gun at him.
While Perry appeared to be kind and sensitive, he was shutting out all the rage he was feeling inside. He hated himself and he hated the people who had hurt him. This hate translated to people in general, and while Perry shuts it out most of the time, eventually the emotions have to show themselves somewhere. Willie-Jay says this about Perry,
"You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them?"
Perry's self esteem was also very low. This is one reason why Perry went with Dick to the Clutter's house in the first place, as well as the reason why Perry told Dick that he had killed a colored man. He wanted Dick to like him.
I never sympathized with Dick at any point. He had a loving family and a relatively normal childhood. He was intelligent, logical, and knew exactly what he was doing. Perry, on the other hand, seemed like he could have led a good, normal life given a separate set of circumstances.
The author's characterization of Perry seemed very realistic to me. It was almost like the author was trying to break the common stereotype of a murderer. We've all wondered what kind of a person someone would have to be to even considering killing someone. Even murderers had to come from somewhere. They're just people. Even if they have some serious problems.
Alecia H.
It didnt surprise me that Perry killed the whole family because i pretty much prepared myself for any possible outcome. And even when i found out Perry killed the Clutters single handedly, i was still more compasionate torward him than Dick. Perrys's ruff childhood is what draws me to him and makes me sympathetic torwards him. Im not saying that his past excuses him from the fact that he killed the Clutters, but i am saying i feel a sense of sorrow for him.
ReplyDeleteDick on the other hand seems to be a very "fake" indvidual. He trys to come across as a "Manly man" but deep down inside, there's a little boy thats weak and scared. If he was half the man he trys to be, he would admit he had every intention of killing the Clutters but chickened out. Either way its still his fault, he is just as guilty as Perry.
I sympathized with perry from the very beginning because he had a bad family history. It didn't surprise me that he killed the clutter family. To be honest i kind of expected him to be a killer. What i did not expect was that he killed them single handedly. It's hard to suspect someone who looks innocent but is as guilty as he was of murder. In the book capote sets you up to believe that perry had nothing to do with the murders of the clutter family. So no perrys actions did not surprise me. In the end i never sympathized for dick.
ReplyDeleteAshley Tullos
4th period
I was suprised that Perry comitted the crime sense Perry was against the murder in the first place and was a very sensitive person it was hard to believe Perry not dick had committed all the murders concedering dick was the one who had planned the murder. Even after I learned about what happened I never sypathized with dick because I thought he was more to blame for the murders even though he hadn't physically pulled the trigger he had planned the murder and was the one who recruited Perry in the first place. Dick also was so much more unlikeable than Perry was dick was a very vulger dirt person who tried raping Nancy and also had imapropriate thoughts about innocent kids and he had no respect for how lucky he was to have a loving family even after they learned of his part in the murder while Perry grew up with a drunk mother and a dad who never really cared about him.
ReplyDeleteWell it really didn't surprise me much because Perry always seemed like he was trying to prove something to Dick or one up him in a way. I believe that Perry killed all four of them because he wanted to prove to Dick that he wasn't soft or weak in any way but then he started to show it when they basically got away with the murder. I always sympathized for perry because Dick was just a stone cold killer but Perry was sensitive in a way so I don't think I really bought into any of the characterizations I always felt like Perry had more of a soul than Dick.
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