In In Cold Blood, where does Capote show sympathy for Perry?

Through depicting Perry as a lonely and remorseful, Capote shows compassion for him and makes him sympathetic to the reader.
Capote constructs an internal life for both Perry and Dick, but Dick’s internal monologues are ruthless and selfish, while Perry’s tend to show self-pity and internal conflict. For example, Capote presents Perry’s motive for meeting up with Dick to collaborate on a robbery to be a desire for attention from someone who cares about him. When Perry receives Dick’s letter inviting him to help out with “the perfect score,” he responds, not because of the money but because Dick happens to be in the same town as a Preacher he had met in prison, Willie-Jay, who Perry says is the only person who “had ever recognized his worth, his potentialities” (51-52).
Capote also portrays Perry as showing remorse. After the murders, he says and thinks repeatedly that “there must be something wrong with [himself and Dick]” (124). He also expresses surprise that he was able to kill at all: “Way, way rock-bottom, I never thought I could do it. A thing like that,” he tells Dick (125).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How does Bilbo show leadership and courage in The Hobbit?

In “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion writes that the “lesson” of her story is that “it is distinctly possible to remain too long at the fair.” What does she mean? How does the final section of the essay portray how she came to this understanding, her feelings about it, and the consequences of it?

Why does the poet say "all the men and women merely players"?