In Cold Blood
Truman Capote
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Character Analysis: Mr Herb Clutter
Mr Clutter is a “very nice gentleman” – even his murderers agree! He is a benevolent presence in Holcomb and a devoted family man who runs the farm and pays his employees generously. He also dedicates himself to his community through the “4-H Club” which embodies the four values Herb holds dear: “Head, Heart, Hands, Health.” He loves his wife and worries greatly for her mental health, he is proud of his eldest daughters and their choice of husband/fiancé respectively, he is especially close with Nancy who is in every way the golden child (though her relationship with Bobby causes some tension), and he holds affection for his young and only son Kenyon who he knows is unlikely to grow up to manage the farm one day but will hopefully find his way in life. Though Mr Clutter is not a two-dimensionally flawless man, he is undeniably a good man, and Capote repeatedly affirms this from the perspective of multiple characters.
However, we only get to know Mr Clutter very briefly, and one could argue that there is a degree of whitewashing that occurs after someone’s death; it is almost suspicious that everyone in town thinks fondly of Herb and cannot think of anyone who could possibly have a grudge against him. This characterisation also compounds the senselessness and confusion in the wake of the murders, for the conventional explanations of a crime like domestic violence or a rival lover are quickly dismissed by both town gossip and law enforcement.
There is an acknowledgement that his relationship with his wife is troubled, as her poor health hinders her from fulfilling the conventional role of a farmer’s wife or taking part in and hosting family gatherings. They even sleep in separate rooms because of how disparate their lives are – Herb is awake at 6:30 and ready to work, whereas Bonnie struggles to get out of bed most days. Furthermore, as a Methodist he harbours some prejudicial views towards Bobby Rupp for being a Catholic, which leads to conflict between him and Nancy, though neither of these two things are implied to be insurmountable. Rather, they are mundane family problems that are now frozen in time, with no one left alive to resolve them. Ultimately, Capote building up Mr Clutter as a family man and valuable presence in the community makes the sudden loss of him all the more stark.
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In Cold Blood
Sample Essay
In Cold Blood is the story of an apparently motiveless murder of an innocent family, and the ramifications for the town and people involved. The full title of the text is In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences, which hints at Capote’s dual focus on both the crime and its reverberations. But it is also a text that combines the credibility of a real story, the freedom of a documentary, the allure of a film, and the precision of poetry. This synthesis of genres and styles is something we will examine throughout this Text Guide, and is always worth keeping in mind when we talk about the narrative itself.
The Clutter family – Mr Herb Clutter and Mrs Bonnie Clutter, and their two youngest children Nancy and Kenyon – were brutally killed in their Kansas farm home on Sunday 15 November, 1959. The murderers were Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, two ex-convicts out on parole for petty theft who had heard rumours in prison that Mr Clutter kept $10,000 in a safe in his home, though this turns out to be false information. The two men plan to carry out a robbery, but leave having shot four innocent people.
From here, the book makes temporal shifts between the town of Holcomb where the Clutters lived and where the townsfolk struggle to accept and understand the violent and seemingly random attack in their community, and the stories of Dick and Perry who flee the state but are later apprehended by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, led by investigator Alvin Dewey who was a friend of the Clutter family.
Over the course of Dick and Perry’s interactions, we learn more about their lives and the various tragedies and accidents that have befallen them, leaving them fractured and damaged both physically and psychologically. In the end, they are sentenced to death and held on Death Row in a Kansas prison for years before they are executed on April 14th, 1965.
The text opens with the introduction to and immediate murder of the Clutters, and ends with the execution by hanging of Perry and Dick. Hence, the story is bookended by death, but also concerns itself with what caused these events and what happens as a consequence. In this sense, this is almost like a mystery novel: we know that Perry and Dick were killed because they murdered the Clutters, but why were the Clutters murdered? This is the central premise that Capote seeks to unravel.
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