Capote increasingly refers to Perry and Dick as Smith and Hickock as the execution date nears. Using last names, Capote is symbolically representing the distancing effect the trial has on the characters. The trial refers to them by their last names, and the Dick and Perry of the rest of the novel fade into courtroom entities. In many ways, this difference in name usage represents the fact that the trial and the book are otherwise similar. Although the trial is official, Capote's book is in many way a second trial, an attempt to make the average reader sympathize with Dick and Perry, or at least to make the reader understand the tragedy of their deaths. This removes the reader from the criminals. This is because as the story moves along we become attached to Perry and Dick and that is how we refer to them, not as Smith and Hickock. The use of last names is something that people use formally if they have never met someone, or to someone higher up than them. But at this point in the story, we have gotten to know Dick and Perry, we have followed their life journies up until the moment that they are hanged. We know them on a level that warrants us to call them Dick and Perry as opposed to Hickock and Smith. Capote implements these new “names” for them because he is also fading away from them and calling them Hickock and Smith seems to push them farther away. They are no longer someone who we call by their first names, as we no longer want to be so connected to them, this is the end for Perry and Smith, so as they leave us it is easier to call them Hickock and Smith making them less personable to all of those reading.