The American Dream In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

The rigid traditional views of the Bible Belt in the 50’s are challenged in the 1965 nonfiction novel In Cold Blood. When two petty thieves murder a prominent family and devastate the countryside town of Holcomb, Kansas the ideal family environment is tainted. At first, there is no clear motive, but as the novel progresses, the reader gets a taste of the convicts’ warped American Dreams. At that time in history, Americans were enjoying the post WWII prosperity and families like the Clutters were profiting. However, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were not experiencing the similar good fortune. Through the 6 years of interviews and general plot Capote shows what can happen when someone wants what everyone else has, but no means to attain it. In Cold Blood demonstrates how the American Dream can cause an obsessive pursuit of wealth and juvenile fantasies leading down a path of self-destruction. “Dick Hickock and Perry Smith's plan to rob the Clutter family was to be their last job and should have provided enough money for Dick and Perry to have the free lives they had only imagined” (Myers, Freedom in In Cold Blood). When the robbery failed and became brutal, the motive was presented as their struggling attempt at an unrealistic idea of freedom. The criminals’ distorted views come from past troubles “for Perry Smith's life had been no bed of roses but …show more content…
The agent in charge of the case, Alvin Dewey, became obsessed with resolving the Clutter murders. Alvin’s mind rejected anything that did not have to do with the Clutter case (148). During an interview Capote states "In fact, during the past three weeks, Dewey had dropped twenty pounds" (149) and Dewey’s wife added, "His state of mind was bad; he was emaciated; and he was smoking sixty cigarettes a day" (165). Alvin also often had dreams containing Smith and Hickock and imagined their deaths would bring a sense of relief