Perry In Cold Blood Analysis

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Capote’s Humanization of Perry in Part II of In Cold Blood In the Part II of his nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, Truman Capote describes Perry, one of the men who killed the Clutter family, and his belief that since he and Dick killed an entire family, something must be wrong with them, while Dick only sees something wrong with Perry. Capote’s purpose in this passage is to humanize Perry in order to enable the reader to better relate to Perry as well as to build additional suspense concerning the reason seemingly ordinary people have for killing a family. He employs a neutral tone as well as Perry’s dialogue with Dick in order to convey this purpose. Throughout the passage, Capote uses a consistently neutral tone in order to establish a …show more content…
By using Perry’s own words to portray how he feels about the murder, these emotions are given more credibility than if Capote had just generalized his feelings. Additionally, Capote incorporates the lines that reveal the most about Perry’s personality in order to build a stronger, deeper character. For example, Perry remarks to Dick, “‘I think there must be something wrong with us. To do what we did’” (108). This reveals that Perry views their personalities are flawed and that killing the Clutters was not morally right. Capote uses this to show that not all murderers feel a lack of remorse for killing people. In this context, it portrays Perry as a flawed, regretful human who the reader can better relate to and sympathize with. Moreover, Capote employs repetition in Perry’s conversation with Dick to solidify these details. Perry further explains, “‘There’s got to be something wrong with somebody who’d do a thing like that’” (108). Although this does not reveal any new traits, this improves the credibility of Perry’s previous assertion. While the first claim can be interpreted as possibly meaningless, the inclusion of this statement helps the reader understand that Perry’s original claim was valid. Moreover, these lines reveal that Perry is unaware of a reason why he and Dick would kill the Clutter
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