Irresponsibility In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

In today’s culture, men and women’s’ lack of prudence, in all areas of life, cause a slew of undesirable effects every day. Often enough, irresponsible actions cause one to leave the stove on overnight, or miss one’s dentist appointment. However, the idea of irresponsibility takes on an entirely new meaning in Truman Capote’s true-crime novel In Cold Blood. In the novel, Capote analyzes the personalities of the late Clutters, but also those of the culprits, Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith. The author reveals volumes regarding their characters and even the parts of them that led to the murder of the Clutters. In In Cold Blood, an inability to take responsibility, on the part of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, led to the slaughter of the Clutter family. To begin, Perry Edward Smith demonstrates a heavy amount of irresponsibility during his early years and up until the epoch of the murders. As a child of poor rodeo performers/substance abusers, Perry, nor his siblings, lived an idyllic life. Taking what that life handed to him, Perry, along with his brother and sisters, lived at the back of an old truck off of Hawks Brand condensed milk and Hershey kisses, among what Capote mentioned. As almost an extended metaphor, Perry consistently lived out a vagabond existence. From when Perry was a boy, he bounced from orphanage to orphanage, making a painful stop at one of the Catholic variety, where nuns …show more content…
The men, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, are characterized not only by their heinous act of murder, but also by the choices they made and the attitudes they portrayed before and after the murders. All things considered, Perry and Dick, though dissimilar in many ways, are alike in the fact that they possess an inability to take responsibility and it was that folly that relegated their lives to ones apt for crime, which ultimately led to the demise of the