Judging from the first 20 or so pages of In Cold Blood, it is apparent that Truman Capote spends a lot of time describing the characters to give one a better picture of the story later on. However, he spends a great deal of time on the Clutter family and not much on Dick and Perry. This is peculiar because the Clutter family won’t be alive for much longer in the story, while Dick and Perry make much of it.

I believe Capote does this in order to make the reader feel closer to the Clutters, and feel bad for them. By doing this, he also depicts Dick and Perry as monsters. The person focused on the most in the story is Nancy Clutter. She is shown to be a great person. Her father respects and loves her, other people in the town look up to her and Mrs. Katz even wants Nancy to be a role model for her daughter. This is clear when Mrs. Katz asks Nancy to show her daughter to make cherry pie. Nancy also seems to be very popular around school, seeing as she is dating Bobby Rupp, the school basketball star. All of these things show that Nancy is beloved person around the town and is very likable from the reader’s standpoint. By spending so much time on Nancy, Truman Capote also depicts Perry and Dick to be monsters simply because we don’t know anything about them. The first time we meet Perry in the story, he is eating breakfast; it consists of aspirin and root beer. As a human, we judge people based on this and there is clearly something wrong with a person who starts their day off only with soda and medicine. Capote goes on to show that he doesn’t have much of a conscience because what he and Dick strive to do is go to a remote island where there is gold and lots of women. These two descriptions, coupled with Perry’s brutish build already give the reader a negative view on Dick and Perry even when we don’t really know much about them.