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In Cold Blood contains many examples of families with different situations and provides that not everyone in your family is blood, it could be a close relative. Families in this book are seen as something that protects you. Capote makes it very clear that a lack of family ties is what makes Perry such a person who stands out from the rest of society. Isolated people like Perry, who have no close family ties, are at high risk for social disturbance and violence.
In the film, there was no mention of the relationships between Dick and Perry and their families.
This may be because in the film they wanted to exaggerate loneliness of the two and exaggerate that all they had was each other which would make the viewerreader feel sympathetic for the two instead of presenting them as criminals in the movie. If this had been something unreal, then the themes could not have been more obvious.Two different backgrounds are put together.
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The outsiders kill the insiders in the first round, then lose the second to the person. Although Perry and Dick commit the same crime, Nonetheless, they have different reasons for pursuing money because they both arose from different backgrounds.
Perry- suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. “When Smith attacked Mr. Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside a schizophrenic darkness.”
(page 306) This quote is from the clinical analysis of Perry’s criminal tendencies, and it legitimizes Perry’s claim that he was not in complete control of his actions when he carried out the murders of the Clutters.
He was, rather, acting out of his medical incapacity to manage his emotional actions. Perry is? a man who lies about killing a man just to impress. He's had an abusive childhood with an alcoholic mother who choked on her own vomit, and a father who wouldn't send him to school and dragged him around the country in a makeshift trailer.
His father retrieved him and they lived together for awhile, always moving on so that Perry never had a chance to go to school. 'I finished the third grade,' Perry recalled, 'which was the finish.' (Chapter 2)There is also an assumption that Perry killed the Clutters because of what his father told him. Dad snatched a biscuit out of my hand, and said I ate too much, what a selfish, greedy bastard I was, and why didn't I get out, he don't want me there no more. He carried on like that till I couldn't stand it. My hands got hold of his throat.
My hands, but I couldn't control them. They wanted to choke him to death. (Chapter 2) Two of his siblings committed suicide and his remaining sister is afraid of him. His only lasting relationships, except from a friendship with an Indian logger, have been with fellow convicts, and it's one of these relationships that ultimately gets him involved in a brutal murder and a trip to the gallows. His childhood traumas have left him with some childlike behaviors—he still wets the bed and sucks his thumb when he cries in his sleep. 'After all, it was 'painful' to imagine that one might be 'not just right' - particularly if whatever was wrong was not your own fault but 'maybe a thing you were born with.'' (110) Perry, on reflecting upon his act of murder, wonders whether he was fated to live a doomed life since practically his entire family had befallen endings.
With his unhappy childhood behind him, he wonders as to whether it wasn't his fault but the way things just as it is. Perry's a complicated guy, full of contradictions and quick changes. Due to his horrifically abusive past, the characters also wonder at this as Perry's unhappy childhood had shaped his future. He finds that he just can't condemn Perry even though he had performed such brutal act of murder. And Nnot just Dewey, but others such as Mrs. Meier seems to hold sympathy for Perry. Perry's act of murder came not because he wanted them dead, but because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. His anger came from his past. Due to his abusive past, he took out all his anger from the abuse he had on the Clutters'.
He's Capote's most complex character, and we close the book wondering how we could feel sympathy for this guy. But we do. Why?
Dick- brain damage from a concussion. Dick has loving parents, no poorer than anyone else in the neighborhood. By his parents' and his own account (we know, we know), he was a good kid, did well in school, lettered in nine sports. But like Perry, he feels life hasn't given him what he deserves and he feels entitled to get it by whatever means necessary. Plus, he's got zero insight on his warped perspective on life. While Perry wonders, 'I think there must be something wrong with us' (Chapter 2) to do what they did, Dick replies, 'Deal me out, baby, I'm a normal' (Chapter 2). Dick doesn't have a shred of respect for human life. He seems to have no ability to think about the consequence of his actions, and he wants what he wants when he wants it. have concern for the effect of his actions on anyone else. This lets him do what he does without being particularly bothered by it. He was also covered in tattoos dedicated to different moments and people in his life. He also had tattoos dedicated to his first ex-wife and his boys ''I have three boys who I will definitely take care of,''
Perry and Dick both were 'victims of society,'' in the way defense attorneys use that term. For their own victims, they chose the Clutter family--a well-off, middle-class, God-fearing family that, in every respect, lived in an opposite world. “‘Deal me out, baby,’ Dick said. ‘I’m a normal.’ And Dick meant what he said. He thought of himself as balanced, as sane as anyone—maybe a bit smarter than the average fellow, that’s all. But Perry—there was, in Dick’s opinion, ‘something wrong’ with Little Perry.” (Page 108) Dick uses Perry as a foil for his own self-image, often belittling or impugning him for his more eccentric, “childish,” or effeminate qualities, in comparison with which Dick convinces himself that he is “normal.
” Perry, on the other hand, prides himself on being “exceptional,” sensitive, even “artistic” in comparison to Dick. However, each man looks to the other for affirmation of his own masculinity, Dick latching onto Perry for his “killer instincts,” and Perry yearning for Dick to think him “hard, as much the ‘masculine type’ as he considered Dick to be” (111). Both Perry Smith and Dick Hickock were both ex convicts, and they intended to rob the family. However, they were surprised that no money was barely there. Dick loved his parents, even though he was cruel to others. He is more known as a bad decision maker.
Yea his parents were poor but they didn't present mental abuse towards him. A person can also see the difference between Dick and Perry. “Dick was holding the knife. I asked him for it, and he gave it to me, and I said, ‘All right, Dick. Here goes.’ But I didn’t mean it. I meant to call his bluff, make him argue me out of it, make him admit he was a phony and a coward. See, it was something between me and Dick. I knelt down beside Mr. Clutter, and the pain of kneeling—I thought of that goddamn dollar. Silver dollar. The shame. Disgust. And they’d told me never to come back to Kansas. But I didn’t realize what I’d done till I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming underwater.” (Pg.244) A reader can also conclude that Perry’s actions were not intentional as he states, “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.”
Family life play a vital role in the making of the book. It provides reasoning to why Capote wrote the book,and to drive the actions of the characters based their backgrounds.In this caser, murderer.A assumption made can be whether or not a person commits wrongdoing because of their past, or is it because they are just being ignorant to society because they never went through the struggle to want to do better. In this case A reader can conclude,perry wants to do better with his life because of all the traumas and struggles, and the hardships within his family to earn a better life.
On the other Dick, because he wasn't as poor he had a relationship with his parents, which caused him to make ignorant decisions because he didn't learn as a young age. The clutters, who symbolize the peacefulness and politeness in their community are= shocked of perry's actions despite his life from a broken home. The Clutters uprightness is related to the strength of their family as Perry’s criminality is connected to his mental abuse and cruelty from his parents.
The Clutter killings wreak havoc on the security of Holcomb, fragmenting the community and sowing the first seeds of doubt and suspicion. In allegorical terms, the residents of Holcomb experience a kind of fall from grace, and a loss of their former innocence, as for the first time they are forced to confront the unseemly reality of the killers and the world they represent. In spirit Dick is still wedded to his first wife and his dreams of becoming self sufficient are linked to the ability to support her and their three sons. The strength of a person's family ties had the larger implication of whether that person can live happily well off and in a self determined fashion.
Example of a Film About Family Relationships. (2021, Dec 09). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/example-of-a-film-about-family-relationships-essay
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