Perry as a Child

Truman Capote depicts Perry as a child to show that he didn’t know what he was doing when he murdered the Clutters. Perry is consistently viewed as physically small. Capote describes him as a, “little fellow, not much over five feet high” (168). Not only is his physical appearance show how he is still a child but so do his actions. Perry goes about his life wanting to have fun. In part III of In Cold Blood Perry reminisces his purse snatching fun when he was younger. He said it was something that cheered him up. Then Capote says, “Things hadn’t changed much. Perry was twenty- odd years older and a hundred pounds heavier, and yet his material situation had improved not at all. He was still (and wasn’t it incredible, a person of his intelligence, his talent?) an urchin dependent, so to say, on stolen coins.” (193) Perry is re living his child hood as a way to make himself happy. He’s still the same boy he was ten years ago; his acts have just became more violent. Perry and Dick murdered four people but Perry still portrays a child. He asked the lady he was staying at to a hold a box for him and in the box he kept his pink baby blanket (178). A man who isn’t still dwelling on his childhood wouldn’t mind letting go of a piece of cloth from fifteen years ago. In the previous parts of In Cold Blood Perry is continually talking about how it isn’t normal for them to go and kill people. It’s questionable how such a young minded spirit can take account for what he did to the Clutter family. Capote portrays Perry to be an innocent man who may not of understood his actions when he was murdering the Clutter family.