In Cold Blood Quotes

Question 1

Perry describing why he was so attracted to Dick pg28

Answer 1

“Dick’s literalness, his pragmatic approach to every subject, was the primary reason Perry had been attracted to him, for it made Dick seem, compared to himself, so authentically tough, invulnerable, ‘totally masculine’.”

Question 2

Mr Clutter - American Dream

Answer 2

‘Always certain of what he wanted from the world, Mr Clutter had in large measure obtained it…”

Question 3

Dick’s plan for the Clutters

Answer 3

“I promise you, honey, we’ll blast hair all over them walls”

Question 4

Perrys childhood diet

Answer 4

“Living off mush and Hershey kisses and condensed milk”

Question 5

Dr Jones regarding Perrys mental state during the Clutter invasion

Answer 5

“When Smith attacked Mr Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside a schizophrenic darkness”

Question 6

Dreams - Perry - Bird

Answer 6

“It was after one of these beatings, one could never forget…that the parrot appeared, arrived while he slept, a bird “taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower,” a warrior-angel who blinded the nuns with its beak, fed upon their eyes, slaughtered them as they “pleaded for mercy,” then so gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him away to “paradise.”

Question 7

Mr Clutter - community

Answer 7

“the community’s most widely known citizen”

Question 8

Dreams - Perry - Jewels

Answer 8

“It was buried there back in 1821 - Peruvian bullion, jewellery. Sixty million dollars - that’s what they say it’s worth.”

Question 9

Perrys crimes are driven by need and not greed

Answer 9

“He was still… urchin dependent, so to say, on stolon coins.”

Question 10

Dick is sick of Perry - wife comparison

Answer 10

“Dick was sick of him - his harmonica, his aches and ills, his superstitions, the weepy, womanly eyes, the nagging, whispering voice. Suspicious, self-righteous, spiteful, he was like a wife that must be got rid of.”

Question 11

Dick reveals who killed the Clutters

Answer 11

“Perry Smith killed the Clutters… It was Perry. I couldn’t stop him. He killed them all.”

Question 12

Dewey not holding anger towards Perry

Answer 12

“Nonetheless, he found it possible to look at the man beside him without anger…for Perry Smith’s life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another.”

Question 13

Perry on how he chose the Clutter family - simile

Answer 13

“It was like picking targets off in a shooting gallery.”

Question 14

Dicks opinions on capital punishment

Answer 14

“I’m not against it. Revenge is all it is, but whats wrong with revenge?”

“I believe in hanging. Just so long as I’m not the one being hanged.”

Question 15

Perrys opinions on capital punishment + apology

Answer 15

“I think…it’s a helluva thing to take a life in this manner. I don’t believe in capital punishment, morally or legally. Maybe I had something to contribute, something - It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize.”

Question 16

The effect the murders had on the townspeople - distrust

Answer 16

“Sombre explosions which simulated fires of mistrust”

“Many old neighbours viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.”

Question 17

American Dream - clutters were beloved and are missed by townspeople the most

Answer 17

“Feeling wouldn’t run so high if this had happened to anyone except the Clutters. Anyone less admired. Prosperous. Secure”

Question 18

Holcomb

Answer 18

“Few Americans… had ever heard of Holcomb”

“Drama in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.”

Question 19

Bonnie Clutter - mental illness

Answer 19

“The tension, the withdrawals, the pillow muted sobbing behind locked doors.”

“It lingered like a cloud that might rain or might not.”

Question 20

Description of Clutter house

Answer 20

“The handsome white house, standing on an ample lawn of groomed Bermuda grass, impressed Holcomb; it was a place people pointed out.”

Question 21

What Mr Clutter was known for

Answer 21

“He was known for his equanimity, his charitableness, and the fact that he paid good wages and distributed frequent bonuses.”

Question 22

Separation within the Clutter home and unachievable American Dream

Answer 22

“All my children are very efficient. They don’t need me.”

Question 23

Bonnie Clutter descriptions

Answer 23

“Slightly odd but nice”
“Inexplicable despondency”
“Maturity… had reduced her voice to a single tone, that of apology”
“The bed she so rarely abandoned”

Question 24

Dicks plan for the Clutters

Answer 24

“No witnesses”
“The plan was Dicks, and from first foot-fall to final silence, flawlessly devised”
“The only sure thing is every one of them has to go”

Question 25

Kenyon Clutter description

Answer 25

"...guns, horses, tools, machinery, even a book" "A sensitive and reticent boy" "Lives in a world of his own"

Question 26

Willie-Jay

Answer 26

"Real and only friend" (Perry about Willie-Jay) "more than anything in the world" (Perry about a reunion with WJ) "a poet, something rare and savable" (WJ about Perry- also sees himself that way)

Question 27

Bobby Rupp - adds tension to story and foreshadows murders - eerie atmosphere

Answer 27

"Only now when I think back, I think somebody must have been hiding there. Maybe down among the trees. Somebody just waiting for me to leave."

Question 28

Dick regarding recruiting Perry

Answer 28

"a natural killer" "Such a gift could, under his supervision be profitably exploited"

Question 29

Nancy and Mr Clutter are the only two in the family who resemble the American Dream

Answer 29

"Nancy used only the midnight hours "to be selfish and vain" "

Question 30

Nancy is still discovering her own identity

Answer 30

"Is this Nancy? Or that? Or that? Which is me?"

Question 31

Capote foreshadowing Nancys death

Answer 31

"It was a dress in which she was to be buried"

Question 32

Larry Hendricks - crime scene

Answer 32

"She was wearing some jewellery, two rings - which is one of the reasons why I've always discounted robbery as a motive." "Whoever had done it was much too smart and cool to have left behind any clues like that." "No sign of a struggle, nothing disturbed." "I took one look of Mr Clutter, and it was hard to look again."

Question 33

Capote criticises the fragility of the American Dream

Answer 33

"How was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, could overnight be reduced to this - smoke, thinning as it rose and was received by the big, annihilating sky?"

Question 34

Townspeople are full of fear since the murders

Answer 34

"I've had all the locks changed"- Marie Dewey "Locks and bolts[were] the fastest going items" "Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let the terror walk right in"

Question 35

Perrys abuse at the hands of the nuns during his time in the orphanage - early childhood

Answer 35

"Shrouded disciplinarians who whipped him for wetting the bed"

Question 36

Alvin Dewey - murders being emotionally involved

Answer 36

"What kind of a person would do that - tie up two women... and then draw up the bed-covers, tuck them in, like sweet dreams and good night?" "Emotionally involved with the victims, and felt for them, even as he destroyed them, a certain twisted tenderness." "To make the victim more comfortable"

Question 37

Capote creates sympathy for Perry from reader as he is able to acknowledge (unlike Dick) that what they did was wrong

Answer 37

"I think there must be something wrong with us, to do what we did"

Question 38

Dick is unsympathetic towards his victims and considers himself a 'normal' - demonstrates his lack of guilt and contrasts Perry whilst feminising him

Answer 38

"Deal me out baby... I'm a normal"

Question 39

Dicks evil and unsympathetic nature whilst running over a dog for fun (psychopathy)

Answer 39

"Boy! We sure splattered him!"

Question 40

Perry lashing out at his father - Perrys reckless behaviour as a result of mental illness and a lack of control or awareness over his actions

Answer 40

"My hands got a hold of his throat. My hands - but I couldn't control them."

Question 41

Perrys anger that his sister (Barbara) managed to live a traditional and comfortable lifestyle - demonstrating his arrogance and compassionless nature

Answer 41

"The only real regret I have - I wish the hell my sister had been in that house."

Question 42

Dick - American Dream Capote suggests that social inequality acts as a barrier to living a comfortable life, explaining why Dick turned to a life of crime despite being a smart student and talented athlete

Answer 42

"He wanted to go to college... But we couldn't do it. Plain didn't have the money. Never had any money."

Question 43

Barbara describing Perry

Answer 43

"I'm afraid of him. I always have been. He can seem so heart-warming and sympathetic." "Oh he can fool you. He can make you feel sorry for him."

Question 44

Dick - Envy

Answer 44

"Envy was always with him; the enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or had anything he wanted to have."

Question 45

Dick and Perry on the run

Answer 45

"Running a race without a finish line"

Question 46

Dick wanting to rape Nancy and Perry preventing him from doing do

Answer 46

"Im gonna bust that little girl." - Dick "But you'll have to kill me first." -Perry

Question 47

Perry regarding Mr Clutter on the night of the murder

Answer 47

"I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat."

Question 48

Mirage - Capote describing Perry

Answer 48

"An ugly and lonely progress towards one mirage and then another." [Mirage : an unrealistic hope or wish that cannot be achieved. An optical illusion, a hallucination, a fantasy]

Question 49

Capotes description of the crime - psychological accident

Answer 49

"The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might swell have been killed by lightning."

Question 50

Perrys opinion on hanging - social class commentary

Answer 50

"The rich never hang, only the poor and friendless."

Question 51

Jury bias in the trial

Answer 51

"Ordinarily I'm against it. But in this case, no." - demonstrates his prejudice against Dick and Perry "They were all family men... seriously affiliated with one or another of the local churches." - similarities between jury and Mr Clutter - even personally acquainted

Question 52

Perrys lack of sympathy over the murders

Answer 52

"Soldiers don't lose much sleep. They murder and get medals for doing it." "Am I sorry?... I'm not. I don't feel anything about it. I wish I did."

Question 53

M'Naughten Rule and Psychiatrist during the trial

Answer 53

"A formula quite colour-blind to any permutations between black and white." "He secretly feels inferior to others." - Dr Jones about Dick "His rages in the past have been directed at authority figures." - Dr Jones about Perry

Question 54

A guard regarding the death penalty in Kansas

Answer 54

"Juries hand it out like they were giving candy to kids."

Question 55

Brutality of capital punishment

Answer 55

"His heart kept beating for nineteen minutes

Question 56

Barbara regarding Perrys free will

Answer 56

"What you have done whether right or wrong is your own doing." "You are a human being with free will."

Question 57

American Dream - what the Clutter family represented

Answer 57

"That family represented everything people hereabouts really value and respect, and that such a thing could happen to them- well, its like being told there's no God."

Question 58

Perry - Dreams [snake]

Answer 58

"What it comes down to is I want the diamonds more than i'm afraid of the snake"

Question 59

Dicks car crash

Answer 59

"Concussed his head in a car smash-up. After that, he wasn't the same boy."