Cold Blood :: Character Analysis, Perry Smith

In Truman Capotes non-fiction novel In refrigerated Blood, the Clutter familys murderers, Perry Smith and woodpecker Hickock, are exposed like never before. The novel allows the reader to experience an intimate understanding of the murderers pasts, thoughts, and feelings. It goes into great detail of Smith and Hickocks pasts which helps to explain the path of deportment they were walking leading up to the murders, as well as the thoughts that were running through their minds after the killings.Perry Smith was a short man with a large torso. At first glance, he seemed a much normal-sized man, a powerful man, with the shoulders, 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 (15). What Smith lacked in stature, he made up in knowledge. Perry was a dictionary buff, a devotee of obscure words (22). As an adolescent, he craved literature and loved to earnings insight of the imaginary worlds he escaped in to, for Perrys reality was nothing less than a living nightmare. His mother was an alcoholic and had strangled to death on her own vomit (110). Smith had two sisters and an older brother. His sister Fern had committed suicide by jumping out of a window and his brother pry followed Ferns suit and committed suicide the day after his wife had killed herself. Perrys sister, Barbara, was the only normal one and had made a good life for herself. These traumatic events left Perry mentally unstable and ultimately landed him in jail, where he came into acquaintance with Dick Hickock, who was in jail for passing bad checks. Dick and Perry became friends and this new friendship changed the course of their lives forever. Hickock immediately made note of Perrys odd personality and stated that there was something wrong with Little Perry. Perry could be such(prenominal) a kid, always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep. And often Dick had seen him sit for hours just sucking his thumb. In some ways old Perry was skittish as hell. Take, for instance, that temper of his of his. He could slide into a fury quicker than ten drunk Indians. And yet you wouldnt know it. He might be ready to kill you, but youd never know it, not to look at it or listen to it (108). Perrys short fuse and dysfunctional background were the two pieces to Perrys corrupt life puzzle that soured and tainted the final picture.