Sympathy in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood Essay Example

In Truman Capote's book In Cold Bold, he brought sympathy towards characters regardless of how they're portrayed in the book. Two characters in which this sympathetic attitude is shown are Perry Smith and Detective Dewey. In this novel, these characters are drastically different due to one character being a murderer and the other being the head detective to find the murders. Although both characters are shown sympathy, the reasons for why they are receiving this sympathy differ. 

Perry is a character that is revealed early in the story, and it's known that he and his accomplice Dick are going to be the murders of the Clutter family. In the first section of the book, readers are informed that Perry is "maimed "(pg.31) as a result of a motorcycle crash, and he still is severely damaged from this incident. In chapter 2, the readers get an understanding of Perry's childhood. Perry's childhood was quite traumatic because of his mother who was an alcoholic, and his father who caused him to move a lot. This information appears again when Perry is interviewed in the fourth section of the book, and it shows that as a young child, he was exposed to abuse, and as he got older, the harmful exposure was still active in his life. In addition to his parents, Perry has three siblings, but two of them committed suicide, and his sister was too afraid to see him. In Perry's confession regarding the murder, the author adds specific details to show the readers that while the robbery was taking place, Perry was trying to keep Dick from causing more harm to them and keep them comfortable. 

Furthermore, the next character that sympathy is shown to is Detective Dewey. Detective Dewey is the head detective in this case, and he was "real fond of Herb and Bonnie and saw them every Sunday at chruch."(Pg.80) From this connection that he shared with the Clutters, this case became personal to him. This case resulted in most of Detective Dewey's time being taken up and he would take many hours examining evidence and receiving phone calls at mostly any time of the day. He become so attached to this case, that "his mind automatically rejected problems not concerned with the Clutter case."(pg.148).