Expectation In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Expectation breeds motive, perhaps even the motive to murder. The rights people feel entitled to sculpt the basis of their decisions. Some people merely justify procrastinating; others, murder. It’s extremely easy to self-justify, particularly due to expectation. This expectation is the stereotypical American Dream, which is extremely open to interpretation. This relentless desire for ‘stability’- for this fallacious sense of material comfort- expresses itself in different characteristics. In the novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote analyzes Dick Hickock and Perry Smith; fugitives convicted of murder. They are subjective failures of subjective expectations of subjective justifications. He explains Perry as “an urchin dependent, so to say, on …show more content…
This is Dick’s interpretation of the glorified American Dream. This definition, without any real work ethic or drive, is what leads Dick to become selfish, manipulative, and working only for his own personal gain, and “it was important, however that Perry not suspected this - not until Perry, with his gift, had helped further Dick’s ambitions,” (Capote #). Not only is Dick greedy, but he lacks empathy or moral decency, promising to “blast hair all over them walls,” (Capote #) as he brutally murders the Clutters. He has no respect for human life, and thus easily convinces Perry Smith to murder a family for the supposed loot in the house. This is how Dick’s American Dream contrasts to Perry’s, in that Dick is ruthless, debatably even psychopathic in order to achieve his selfish ambitions, and Perry is more lenient, following those who have what he’d like to attain rather than manipulating them. This is what allows the duo to bond between their shared American Dream, and reinforce their sense of entitlement, thus allowing Dick to enforce his lack of morality and giving Perry the motivation and manipulation he needs in order to murder a