In Cold Blood-Why?

After completing my reading of “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote, and giving myself a few days to really think the story through from beginning to end, it struck me. . . . What is Capote’s message to the reader? He tells a violent and horrific story that focuses on the impact that two men have on a community when they savagely and senselessly murder a family. My question is, why?

To begin to try and answer this myself, I thought it best to try and read behind the story. Throughout the book I was carried along through a story that is riveting, shocking, and all consuming. I met and became familiar with various characters that provide to me historical and “current” information about themselves and the two men who carried out the murders, Dick and Perry. I even experienced portions of the story through the eyes of these men. In the way that Capote designed this book, it was easy to get lost in the question to why they committed these killings. What drove them? Is it how they were raised or from the traumas they endured? Or were they just born evil? These are questions that I can’t answer. I don’t think anyone can answer. By trying to, we miss the bigger picture.

There is a paragraph (p. 271) that begins, “The Garden City Telegram, on the eve of the trial’s start, printed the following editorial: ‘Some may think the eyes of the entire nation are on the Garden City during this sensational murder trial. But they are not. Even a hundred miles west of here in Colorado a few persons are even acquainted with the case-other than just remembering some members of a prominent family were slain. This is a sad commentary on the state of crime in our nation. Since the four members of the Clutter family were killed last fall, several other such multiple murders have occurred in various parts of the country. Just during the few days leading up to this trial at least three mass murder cases broke into the headlines. As a result, this crime and trial are just one many cases people have read about and forgotten. . . .’.” I mention this paragraph because I feel it is significant to the underlying message. Isn’t this maybe what Capote really wanted his readers to be thinking about?

The book continues with the story of the trial and the conviction and then brings the reader to the time that Dick and Perry spent on Death Row. At this point Capote reinforces the prevailing violence by introducing Earl Wilson, Bobby Jo Spencer and Lowell Lee Andrews (p. 311)-inmates that are on death row when Dick and Perry arrive. For the next 10 pages a recounting of their violent acts is detailed, along with an opportunity to learn about these men too. This is done in a way similar to how Dick and Perry’s murders were told. By page 322 the final two death row inmates are mentioned when they arrive, George Ronald York and James Douglas Latham. In my opinion, Capote spent time on providing us with the crimes of these men to further drive the underlying message.

Even in 1965 there was recognition that we live in a society of growing violence. It is fascinating to me that even then, in a time where things were thought of as “simpler” there was a perception of increasing brutality and an ever rising apathy towards it. If I were to open a newspaper or log onto any news website, I can guarantee that there are several similar stories of cruelty and bloodshed to the one that rocked Holcomb all those years ago. What I find most disheartening, even after having my eyes opened to it by this book, is that I am no less accepting or indifferent to it.