George York and James Latham

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 secrets and many personality traits. He is described as a short man, with a large torso. At first glance, “he seemed a more normal-sized man, a powerful man, with the shoulder, the arms, the thick, crouching torso of a weight lifter. [However] when he stood up he was no taller than a twelve-year old child.” What Smith lacked in stature, he made up for in knowledge. Perry was “a dictionary buff, a devotee of obscure words”. As an adolescent, he craved literature and loved to gain insight of the imaginary worlds he escaped into, for Perry’s reality was nothing less than a living nightmare. His mother was an alcoholic who committed suicide when Perry was only thirteen-years old. Smith had two sisters and an older brother. His sister, Fern had…

“ On Wednesday, April 14, 1965 Kansas supreme court decided two lives must end between midnight and two in the morning”(54). Perry Smith and Dick Hickock managed the murder of the Clutter family. The two men responded differently to the arrest, jail time, and death sentences. Initially the arrest came as a shock to both men, neither had any idea to consider the possibility of the murder as the reason of arrest. On the fourth floor of the county courthouse lived Perry Smith. Over time Perry…

The nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, entirely reconstructed a horrific crime scene while depicting the lives of the runaway murderers. The author, Truman Capote, uses montage (a form of writing that switches back and forth) to allow the readers to see into the lives of the killers and the petrified people of Holcomb, Kansas. On November 15, 1959, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith brutally murdered Herbert, Bonnie, Kenyon and Nancy Clutter in their farmhouse. Floyd Wells, a previous cell mate of…

Though many communication concepts apply to these killers, the Johari Window allows us to connect the killers’ backgrounds and lives into their communication patterns or lack thereof. In order to analyze what the Johari Window model of communication means in Hickock and Smith’s lives, we first must have a complete grasp on the model. According to the University of Southern California, the Johari Window model is “…the disclosure/feedback model of self-awareness that can be used an information…