Richard Hickock

In 1967 a year after the first release of the book In Cold Blood by Truman Capote Richard Brooks released a film adaptation of the nonfiction novel. Both the movie and the book were based on a real life murder of a family of four living in Kansas City. Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, two men who had previously been to jail, were the central focus of the novel. Richard Brooks infused strikingly similar dialogue between characters and key events into the movie, although many minor details were lost.…

In Truman Capote 's book “In Cold Blood”, from 1965, the terrible murder of the Clutter family is told to you, in a way that in 1965 was called “new journalism”. It was Capote’s telling of a real life murder through the eyes of the people in the town and in particular Perry Smith, one of the people responsible for the murders. Truman Capote had many visits and conversations with Perry Smith and this led him to raise the question of whether a man alone can be held responsible for his actions…

found dead, bound and shot in the head with a shotgun. With no apparent motive for the crime, detectives are left almost clueless. With the help of a former cellmate of the killers, detectives were able to identify the killers as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Capote reconstructs the series of events leading up to and after the murders. Capote writes for the reader to feel sympathy towards Perry despite his criminal past, because Capote himself is similar to Perry; the reader sympathizes with…

for the first time. Again, Hickock displays his apathy when he decides to abandon Perry right before his arrest. Though he never gets to carry out his plan, it has the heartless motive that makes him who he is. Hickock does have some sympathy towards his parents. He worries before he writes bad checks if it will affect them. He decides that he will pay it back when he moves to Mexico. His heart is in the right place when it comes to his parents. Altogether, Hickock is a heartless…

In Cold Blood, written in 1966, is arguably Truman Capote’s greatest piece of literary work. The novel regarded the 1959 murder of four family members who lived in the small community of Holcomb, Kansas. This remarkable novel was noted for the author’s exceptional use of several literary elements. In an excerpt describing the small town in the story, Capote demonstrated his elaborate use of stylistic elements, such as diction, imagery, and tone. Using those tools, Capote characterized Holcomb as…

I walked up to the entrance of the evacuated home. The house could have been an enchanting two-story house; with its ivory framed windows, and front lawn. If it was not abandoned and lifeless, maybe this house would have been the dream house everyone fancied. But it's lifeless and boorish, just like the carrion of Timothy Woodsen. His body was no longer there, but the evidence was. A Butcher knife lied hairbreadth an office chair. “This is where the dispatching transpired,” stated my best…

creating a negative identity for themselves. This occurs in the novel In Cold Blood through the character of Dick Hickock. Hickock’s family was by no means wealthy, but they were able to make a living and give Dick a fairly good upbringing. As teenager Dick was “an outstanding athlete”, and “a pretty good student, too” (Capote 166). If he was simply given or born into his identity, then Dick Hickock would have gone on to lead a average, healthy life as a working class citizen, but instead his…

calls Perry ‘Honey’ a great deal, and men don’t call each other this when they are just friends. Hickock was very fond of calling him “nicknames” that men normally don’t call their friends. He calls Smith this to indicate that there is more than just friendship between the two of them. To demonstrate that Capote’s work was biased towards Smith is the fact that he wrote more about Smith than he did Hickock. As supported in the article, “Truman Caopte and the Legacy of In Cold Blood,” Ross…

The Innocent Killer Ender Wiggin, a genocidal killer we somehow feel sympathy for, but is our sympathy justified? In an essay by John Kessel, titled “Creating the Innocent Killer”, Kessel discussed this matter and concludes that we should not feel sympathy for him as he is a murderer. He killed two people as well as the entire population of a foreign species, yet still labeled innocent. I agree with Kessel’s conclusion, because although he didn’t know he was committing genocide at the time he…

murderers being charged with 4 deaths Capote has seemingly fallen in some sort of love with one of them. In the non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote the reader sees a clear distinction between Capote's feeling for Perry Smith and for Dick Hickock. Mr. Capote constantly remarks about Perry and all the reasons why he is a bad person, while when discussing Dick, he goes over everything that is wrong with Dick and all the horrible events Dick creates but does not discuss why Dick may be…