Richard (Dick) Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, the cold blooded killers of the Clutter family in In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. When you describe them like that, they seem one and the same, they’re murderers. But, there is way more to them as people than just that, they are similar and they are very different. Dick and Perry are character foils, although they possess a few similar characteristics and experiences. Both men met in jail for petty crimes (Dick for bad checks and petty theft, and Perry for petty crime while involved in a street crime. They both have tattoos on their bodies, and were both significantly maimed in automobile accidents. Both have similar features, but could not be more different. Perry Edward Smith, a man of many
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Dick being much more masculine and a natural leader, noticed Perry’s odd personality and stated that there was “something wrong with Little Perry. Perry could be such a kid, always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep. And often [Dick] had seen him sit for hours just sucking his thumb. In some ways old Perry was spooky as hell. Take, for instance, that temper of his. He could slide into a fury quicker than ten drunk Indians. And yet you wouldn’t know it. He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at it or listen to it”. Perry’s short temper and abusive and dysfunctional background were two pieces of Perry that made him different and much more dangerous than Dick. For Perry wasn’t just a man doing bad things like Dick, he was a man doing bad things, and he didn’t understand why they were bad, just that they were viewed as bad to the world. “When Smith attacked Mr. Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside schizophrenic darkness.” This quote from the clinical determination of Perry’s criminal customs, and it legitimizes Perry’s claim(which he said at the trial) that he was not in complete knowledge or control of his actions or why they were wrong when he carried out the murderers of the Clutters. He was rather acting out of his medical ability to manage his emotional …show more content…
Once inside, the pair planned to kill any potential witnesses, take the money and flee to Mexico and make it big. I’m not giving the whole story of the brutal murders, because that isn’t the point I’m trying to make. The point that I’m trying to make is how different Dick and Perry handled the situation. During this time, both men were in different psychological states of mind. For Perry, he thought that “there must have been something wrong with [them], to do what [they] did. There’s gotta be something wrong with somebody who’d do a thing like that”. Looking back upon the murders, Perry could not comprehend how he could have done that to another person. After his capture in Las Vegas, Perry was questioned and immediately put on his defensive and collective mask for the interrogators, however behind that calm shell was a man who was in great turmoil with his conscious for the moral aspects of his decisions in murdering four innocent people. For Dick, it was not necessarily about the morality of his actions, it was the question if “the two of them [were] honest to God going to get away with a thing like that.” Hickock’s reaction to the murders was not shock over that fact that he had ended four lives, however the possibility that he would get
Dick being much more masculine and a natural leader, noticed Perry’s odd personality and stated that there was “something wrong with Little Perry. Perry could be such a kid, always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep. And often [Dick] had seen him sit for hours just sucking his thumb. In some ways old Perry was spooky as hell. Take, for instance, that temper of his. He could slide into a fury quicker than ten drunk Indians. And yet you wouldn’t know it. He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at it or listen to it”. Perry’s short temper and abusive and dysfunctional background were two pieces of Perry that made him different and much more dangerous than Dick. For Perry wasn’t just a man doing bad things like Dick, he was a man doing bad things, and he didn’t understand why they were bad, just that they were viewed as bad to the world. “When Smith attacked Mr. Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside schizophrenic darkness.” This quote from the clinical determination of Perry’s criminal customs, and it legitimizes Perry’s claim(which he said at the trial) that he was not in complete knowledge or control of his actions or why they were wrong when he carried out the murderers of the Clutters. He was rather acting out of his medical ability to manage his emotional …show more content…
Once inside, the pair planned to kill any potential witnesses, take the money and flee to Mexico and make it big. I’m not giving the whole story of the brutal murders, because that isn’t the point I’m trying to make. The point that I’m trying to make is how different Dick and Perry handled the situation. During this time, both men were in different psychological states of mind. For Perry, he thought that “there must have been something wrong with [them], to do what [they] did. There’s gotta be something wrong with somebody who’d do a thing like that”. Looking back upon the murders, Perry could not comprehend how he could have done that to another person. After his capture in Las Vegas, Perry was questioned and immediately put on his defensive and collective mask for the interrogators, however behind that calm shell was a man who was in great turmoil with his conscious for the moral aspects of his decisions in murdering four innocent people. For Dick, it was not necessarily about the morality of his actions, it was the question if “the two of them [were] honest to God going to get away with a thing like that.” Hickock’s reaction to the murders was not shock over that fact that he had ended four lives, however the possibility that he would get