Hierarchy Of Needs In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, sleeps is one of the most basic physiological things a person needs alongside air and water. For most people, when thinking of sleep, they picture their bed at home where they feel safe and comfortable, essentially building up to the next levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. When a base need, like sleep, is not satisfied a person cannot fulfill any of their higher needs of: safety, social needs, esteem, and self-actualization. In Truman Capote’s novel, In Cold Blood, his character Perry Smith has a childhood history of traumatizing events that prevented him from sleeping soundly at night, along with a lack of the next couple levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and this damages Perry. Throughout the entirety …show more content…
Unlike Dick, his partner in the Clutter murders, Perry didn’t have a home and his family fell apart when he was young due to his parent’s alcoholism and a separation. Although Perry feels like his early childhood was a happy one, and he was proud of his parent’s rodeo circuit, it’s a good starting point for where his life lacked stability. He slept with his family of six in a truck and often didn’t have any food beyond condensed milk and chocolate. This habit of moving place to place follows Perry in life even before he’s on the run with Dick. As an adult he’s gone from the Merchant Marines, to the army, to Bellingham, to Alaska, to Omaha, to Oklahoma, to Texas, to Massachusetts, to Kansas, to Missouri, arrested and sent back to Kansas, then arrested back in Massachusetts, gone to New York, and finally taken back to Kansas where he met Dick in Lansing prison. As a child he also experienced two events that most likely lead to his underlying aggressive personality traits. After his parents separation Perry lived with his mother who sent him to an orphanage run by nuns. Due to him chronically wetting the bed while asleep the orphanage nun would beat him at night and he was eventually then sent to a Salvation Army children’s shelter under worse circumstances. It wasn’t until he is almost killed by a racist nurse at the shelter, due to him catching pneumonia from her abuse, …show more content…
One case example is Alvin Dewy the detective in charge of the Clutter’s murder case who by the end of the book felt sorry for Perry. At this point sleep is still a marker of Perry’s problems and but now it shows how his problems are affecting the people around him. The first example, in the beginning of the book, is the Clutter family. They were pulled out of sleep and each murdered in some type of bed: Mr. Clutter on a mattress, Bonnie and Nancy tucked in bed, and Kenyon on the couch. For the other characters Perry’s actions cause a ripple effect of hysteria and anxiety to wash over their town. The severity of a character’s sleeplessness represents how drastic or unassuming the effects of this contained incident, Dick and Perry left Kansas and had no intent of going back to Holcomb, is on them, and whether they fear Perry or find him