A Wonderfully Helpful Study Packet for

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

IB Language and Literature HLComiskey Herrera 2016

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In Cold Blood Reading Schedule

Date Due Pages Read Packet Questions Completed

Monday, May 2nd Pg. 1-74All of Part One

Numbers 1-19 on pages 14-16Add quotes to your list

Tuesday, May 3rd Pg. 76-113-end at “Boy we sure splattered him!”

Numbers 20-30 on pages 16-17Add quotes to your list

Thursday, May 5th Pg. 113-147-end at “our day ends at 2pm”

Numbers 30-38 on pages 17-18Add quotes to your list

Friday, May 6th Pg. 148-172-end at “Point your finger—maybe that’s it.”

Numbers 39-41on pg. 18Add quotes to your list

Monday, May9th Pg. 172-215-end at “nodded”

Numbers 42-53 on pages 18-20

Tuesday, May 10th Pg. 215-297-begin at VI and finish book!

Numbers 10-13 on page 21-Vocab #5 (pg. 27)

Monday, April 25th None, cuz you done! Entire packet completed with responses from pg. 22 stapled to back.

We will watch the 1984 film on Tuesday (4/19), Wednesday (4/20), and Thursday (4/21).

Due dates are subject to change, so pay attention and check the website in case

anything changes

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Before Reading

The text begins with an epitaph—a poem by medieval French poet François Villon. It is, of course, written in French. Below is the poem:

Frères humains, qui après nous vivez,N'ayez les cœurs contre nous endurcis,Car, si pitié de nous pauvres avez,Dieu en aura plus tôt de vous mercis.

François VillonBallade de pendus

Now, here is an English translation of the poem:  

My brothers who live after us,Don’t harden you hearts against us too,If you have mercy now on us,God may have mercy upon you.

In the space below, write down a few predictions you have about the book based on your reading of this poem.

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Capote's Non-Fiction NovelIN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote. New York: Random House, 343 pages. $5.95.By JOHN C. DIAMANTE, January 14, 1966

Two typical Americans, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, methodically shotgunned a family of four to death for no apparent reason, on November 14, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. Five years later in Manhattan, for even less apparent reasons, the New Yorker sustained an equally violent, scattershot attack by teddy-boy journalist, Tom Wolfe.

Both incidents were bizarre but not unmanageable. Kansas Investigator, Al Dewey, apprehended the murderers and a grateful public had them hanged; Establishment representative Dwight MacDonald exposed the status drop-in and a literate public saw him ridiculed. As in all senseless episodes, only epilogues were wanting: for the Clutter family murder, an explanation of such infrequent violence; for the New Yorker's reputation, unequivocal proof of current literary merit. The publication of In Cold Blood, Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel" on the Clutter affair, recently serialized in the New Yorker,triumphantly answers both needs.

A New Kind of Saga

Much more than the "verbatim" document it was first announced as, In Cold Blood is a new kind of saga, and a unique landmark in American historiography. Its impact and brilliance, the result of a six-year quest after every person and detail involved in the murder, mark the demise of Capote, the literary mannerist. He has abandoned the mellifluous language honed for his previous work, and discovered a new diction--based on listening to a staggering amount of mental transcription taken from the entire cast of a protracted drama--to handle the lives, minds, and language of those directly and indirectly implicated in the Clutter affair.

There will be much discussion of just where to file this event in American letters, and even more speculation on the legitimacy of the pre-publication million dollars Capote has earned for his pilgrimage to Kansas. The outstanding fact of the achievement is, however, that Capote read the newspaper clipping years ago and without hesitation took the considerable

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step from Manhattan to Holcomb to record and explore the phenomenon of inexplicable and unpredictable violence. This project was to be the test of his self-training in listening--not to areas and people familiar to him--but to total strangers. The killers, lawmen, relatives and acquaintances had to be charmed out of hostility, diffidence, and suspicion so that a new blend of reality, fiction, and implication might suggest the truth, rather than the sensationalism, behind such an incident.

He faced the tasks of presenting the respected and emulated Clutters in their farmland environment; graphing the individual backgrounds of the two parolees who systematically murdered then, for the actual sum of about fifty dollars; blending the many moods of the aftermath, and its ramifications; and recording the meaning of it all in the final confrontation between the murderers and the gallows. Not only did he have to create a simultaneity of tone and narrative in which the many active threads, biographical themes, and local vignettes would be balanced but evocative; he also had to discipline himself to a new kind of detachment--not merely because it was his duty to remain aloof from the questions and emotions raised by the tale he had appointed himself teller of, but because he had become dangerously intimate with the lives involved.

Hickock and Smith requested his presence at their joint hanging, and Capote was faced with the fact that he had reached them as a friend as well as artist and biographer; that his trust and warmth, especially for Perry Smith, was the very thing their lives had lacked. When you hear Capote accused of capitalizing on the results of that lack, bear in mind that it was the most extreme test of his objectivity. As a friend of the killers he suffered privately and had their graves marked; as artist and craftsman he raised a public monument to the questions posed by the Clutter affair.

Unanswerable Questions

They are unanswerable questions--on the nature of any great society, on the role of the public as willing and biased spectator to such incidents, on the intricacies of cause and effect, sickness and punishment. That the questions are raised is sufficient testament to the mood created by an objective narrative framework; that the ponderous weight of available answers is avoided speaks as eloquently for Capote's tone as he does through it. In

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speaking largely through biographical discursions, which balance and pace the actual story, he has given the speculators on crime and criminal processes much more than an abused rhetoric about society's chickens coming home to roost. Subtly but tellingly, In Cold Blood passionately surveys the roost itself: a society in which men such as Hickock and Smith, with IQs of 130, will continue to destroy themselves and others. It is the sort of survey which makes the Police Gazette, criminologists' case histories, liberal weeklies' temporiz- ing, and the babbling reportage of slicksters such as Tom Wolfe, seem like very shallow voices.

The central impact of the mass murder lies in a double mischance; first, that Hickock and Smith should ever have found one another, each being the perfect complement in a mutuality predicated on a "big score"; second, that the Clutter family should have been chosen as victims, so incongruous a happening that it made Holcomb, Kansas, feel "like being told there is no God."

If Capote had only presented a bare history, colored with reportorial irony, In Cold Blood would be merely suspenseful and provoking non-fiction. But it is a novel, for Capote, with singular grace, hovers between profound irony and melodrama--the irony of collision and the drama of a not inconsiderable sense of fate. The central impact of the amassed documentation derives from the compelling personality of the central figure, Perry Smith, and his belief in fate. By the time we have come to know Perry and his fated family, for whom the "solution" to life has frequently been violent suicide, we do not scorn this belief. We share Perry's fantasies, his superstitions, his sense of "destiny" (especially for his victims), and learn a real sympathy for the "fate" of the outsider in this society. If this fate is to have any meaning, our sympathy and interest must be distributed widely among the outsiders and insiders, and this is precisely what Capote has accomplished.

In Cold Blood is a minor national epic, illuminating many affecting portraits--allowing to share young Nancy Clutter's poignant diary: "Summer here. Forever I hope"; to witness the shock of her boyfriend's agony, by which an adolescent learns adult numbness; to be harassed by the posturing gruffness of Holcomb's postmistress: ". . . the sane thing to do is to shut up. You live until you die and it doesn't matter how you go--dead's dead": to appreciate Mr. Clutter's Midwest-pastoral dream: "an apple-scented Eden"; to wince

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before the senior Hickock's A History of My Boy's Life submitted to a parole board. One could fault Capote for lingering on certain settings and phenomena dear to his heart; but the substantive backdrop of In Cold Blood is classic Americana on an encyclopedic scale, rendered with the compassion, grace, and humor expected of a writer who has dared to embrace his country.

Against this backdrop moves the spirit apostrophized in Perry's diary: "What is life? It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." For Capote, the movements in the shadows that produced the lightning tragedy of the Clutter murder are the tremors of a nation. Smith and Hickock are neither judged for what they did, nor vulgarly presented as anti-heroes. With courageous and incisive honesty Capote focuses on the dynamics of the two personalities, but never lets the tensions and momentum of the killers' relationship obscure the outward drama their characters trigger.

Caught up in the balance between that relationship and the story of the murder, at the same time conscious of the ambivalence inspired by Capote's structural framework and tonal detachment, the reader finds himself stripped of objectivity. He is forced to participate intensely, not vicariously, in the public phenomenon of impersonal terror; and allowed to share in the private world of personal fantasy--where a childhood symbol such as Perry Smith's avenging parrot "flying overhead, red and green/green and tangerine" becomes a vision that enobles a headline terrorist.

It is heartening, to say the very least, that the literary year which forced the inanity of Tom Wolfes tangerine-flakes on us has given us In Cold Blood as well. The America that Capote has suggested in his immortalization of Hickock and Smith engulfs the America which Wolfe and others have so stridently proclaimed as, indeed, it engulfs us all; those, who like a bright-eyed Capote in Holcomb, respond to this fact with interest and humility, will find In Cold Blood one of those rare documents which irrevocably focuses our attention on the facts and fate flying overhead.

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News November 15, 1959:

“Well, it was pretty bad. That wonderful girl—but you would have never known her. She’d been shot in the back of the head with a shotgun held maybe two inches away. She was lying on her side, facing the wall, and the wall was covered with blood. The bedcovers were drawn up to her shoulders. Sheriff Robinson, he pulled them back, and we saw that she was wearing a bathrobe, pajamas, socks, and slippers—like, whenever it happened, she hadn’t gone to bed yet. Her hands were tied behind her, and her ankles were roped together with the kind of cord you see on Venetian blinds. Sheriff said, ‘Is this Nancy Clutter?’—he’d never seen the child before. And I said, ‘Yes. Yes, that’s Nancy.’”

--Larry Hendricks, upon viewing the murder scene

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Principal Characters of In Cold Blood1. Herb Clutter: Head of the Clutter household. Herb is a well-

liked and respected member of the Holcomb community. Fairly prosperous, he is not thought to have any enemies until his savage murder on November 15, 1959.

2. Bonnie Clutter: Wife of Herb Clutter. Bonnie is a recluse, due to fainting spells and severe depression that force her to stay inside of the house most of the time.

3. Nancy Clutter: Daughter of Herb and Bonnie Clutter. 11th grade. As her father, she is well-liked throughout town and popular among her peers. She is a bright, energetic girl, devoting time to her family, her schoolwork, her activities, and her boyfriend, Bobby Rupp.

4. Kenyon Clutter: Son of Herb and Bonnie Clutter. 10th grade. Kenyon, less social than his sister, Nancy, he is not known to have any enemies.

5. Perry Smith : Convicted thief sentenced to Kansas State Penitentiary. After his parole, Perry is convinced by his friend from jail, Dick Hickock, to rob and kill the Clutter family, a family neither had ever met.

6. Dick Hickock: Friend and former cellmate of Perry Smith. Hickock is the second conspirator of the murder.

7. Floyd Wells : Past employee of Herb Clutter. It is Wells who tells Hickock that the Clutters are wealthy. It is also Wells who connects Hickock and Smith to the deaths of the Clutters.

8. Alvin Dewey: Main detective of the Clutters’ investigation. Dewey receives the call from Wells about Smith and Hickock, and he plays a prominent part in their conviction.

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Herbert and Bonnie Clutter, Nancy and Kenyon

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Perry Smith and Dick Hickock.

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Alvin Dewey

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Study Questions for In Cold Blood

Directions: Respond thoughtfully to each question either in this packet or on your own paper.

Part One: The Last to See Them Alive (pg. 1-74)

1. How does Capote describe the town of Holcomb? Why might Holcomb be an attractive venue for criminals?

2. According to Capote, what is ironic about the effect the Clutter murders had on Holcomb’s tight-knit community?

3. How was Mr. Clutter viewed within the Holcomb community? What was the only “cause for disquiet” in his life?

4. What two things might prohibit someone from approaching the Clutters’ farm, and how might these things prove useless as a deterrent for criminals?

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5. What “worldly belongings” does Perry keep with him, and what might these items reveal about him?

6. In what ways does Perry seem self-obsessed? Are his dreams realistic or not?

7. How do you think Truman Capote was able to recreate private conversations, such as Nancy’s telephone conversations and those between the Clutter family?

8. What equipment did Dick have in his car when he picked up Perry outside the drugstore? How did he think these items would help them, and what can you infer from this?

9. What “projects” caused Mrs. Clutter despair? Why? How was she unlike her husband?

10. Whom did Mr. Clutter meet with the day before he died, and why was this meeting both tragic and ironic?

11. Who is Willie-Jay? Explain his relationship with Perry.

12. What caused Dick to agree to “Dick’s proposition” instead of following a better path?

13. Who is Bobby Rupp, and what was his impression of the last moments spent with Nancy Clutter?

14. When Perry and Dick stopped at the gas station on their way to the Clutters’ farm, what did Dick consider about his partner in crime?

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15. Who was the last of the Clutter family to go to sleep on the night of the murders, and what was this person’s final diary entry? How was this diary helpful to the investigating agents?

16. Why did Susan Kidwell call the Clutter family? What did she and Nancy Ewalt discover when they entered the Clutter house?

17. What did Sherriff Robinson, Larry Hendricks, and Clarence Ewalt discover in the Clutters’ master bedroom, and what was significant about these discoveries?

18. How did Sherriff Robinson, Larry Hendricks, and Clarence Ewalt find Herb Clutter, and what haunts Hendricks the most about this?

19. What did Perry do immediately after the murders? What did Dick do, and why did his father find this strange? What do these actions reveal about Dick and Perry?

Part Two: Persons Unknown (pg. 75-155)

20. What did Alfred Stoecklein hope people would “try to understand?” Why was he so distraught and confused?

21. What was the first thing Agent Alvin Dewey told the press, and what facts did he make known?

22. Explain Agent Dewey’s two “concepts” regarding the murders of the Clutter family. Which did he believe was true?

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23. What possible motives did Agent Dewey discover in Nancy Clutter’s diary, and how did he feel about each of these?

24. What made the police first believe that robbery was the motive for these murders, and what evidence was there to refute that idea?

25. Describe Dick’s and Perry’s attitudes in the days following the murders, and how did each react to the stories in the newspaper?

26. According to Susan, how did Bobby react to the news and investigation of the murders? How did the murders affect Susan and Bobby’s friendship?

27. Describe Dick’s plan for raising enough money to get out of town. What role does Perry play in this scheme?

28. Why did Dick feel so bad about his fake check scheme, and how did Perry try to assuage Dick’s guilt?

29. What about the murder scene weighed on Agent Dewey’s mind and made him speculate about the mindset of the murderers?

30. How did Perry feel after the murders, and how did Dick respond?

31. What did Paul Helm tell Agent Dewey, and why didn’t Dewey believe him?

32. Why did Dick grow to despise Mexico, and why did he want to return to the United States? How did Perry feel about this, and what did he finally decide to do?

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33. Based on his letter, do you think Perry’s father knows Perry’s true nature? Why or why not?

34. To what does Perry attribute his bed wetting, and why does he despise nuns?

35. How did Perry and his father waste their time and money, and how did Perry’s father react to the situation?

36. What might Perry’s sister mean when she writes to him, “IT IS NO SHAME TO HAVE A DIRTY FACE—THE SHAME COMES WHEN YOU KEEP IT DIRTY?”

37. How does Perry truly feel about his sister and her letter? Why does he keep it?

38. What did Willie-Jay say about the letter from Perry’s sister? Do you agree with each of his statements? Why or why not?

39. How do the Clutter murders continue to affect Agent Dewey’s life?

Part Three: Answer (pg. 159-248)

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40. Who is Floyd Wells, and what did he tell Dick? Why did he take so long to speak to the police after hearing about the Clutter murders? Do you think the police should believe Floyd’s story? Why or why not ?

41. What did Dick’s parents tell Agent Nye regarding all of their son’s troubles? What do they think of Perry?

42. What did Dick and Perry plan to do once they found a ride to Nebraska, and why was Perry bothered by this plan? How was their plan foiled?

43. What did the landlady tell Agent Nye about Perry, and what did Nye find in Perry’s box?

44. According to her discussion with Agent Nye, how does Perry’s sister feel about him, and why did she write him so often when he was in prison? What is important about the fact that Perry’s sister never lived in Fort Scott, Kansas?

45. How does Perry feel about all of his siblings? What eventually happened to them?

46. What was Dick’s ultimate plan, and how did Perry feel about it? What was Perry’s biggest concern?

47. Why didn’t Agent Dewey wish to reveal his suspects to the media or to the public?

48. Why is news about the Clutter case spreading faster in Garden City than in Holcomb?

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49. What did Perry worry about while he waited for Dick at the washateria? Describe Perry’s level of trust in Dick.

50. What elements about Dick’s personality bothers Perry, particularly while they hid in Florida? How does Dick feel about this part of his personality?

51. How did Perry and Dick initially feel about the hitchhikers? How did the hitchhikers prove their “value” along the way?

52. What concerns does Agent Dewey have even after apprehending Dick and Perry?

53. What was Dick’s plan in Las Vegas, and why didn’t it work?

54. What did the investigators think about Dick when they first met him? How does Dick initially react to his interrogation?

55. How does Dick react when the agents mention the Clutter family? How do the police finally pressure Dick to confess?

56. How does Perry behave throughout his interrogation? How is he convinced that Dick has confessed?

57. Just as Dick and Perry approached the Clutter house, what happened that almost saved the Clutters’ lives? What ultimately convinced Dick to proceed?

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58. How does Agent Dewey feel after Perry tells the story of how he helped murder the Clutter family?

59. What is the only discrepancy in Perry and Dick’s stories? Whom do you believe and why?

Part Four: The Corner (pg. 251-343)

60. What is unique about the fourth floor of the courthouse and about Perry’s cell in particular?

61. What part of his story does Perry eventually change and why?

62. How do the two court-appointed lawyers feel about defending Perry and Dick? How do you think this will affect the case?

63. While Dick and Perry wait for the trial to begin, what does each of them think about in his cell?

64. Who writes to Perry, and what does this person wish to do?

65. Why do Dick and Perry’s lawyers want the trial postponed? Do you think their reasons are valid? Why or why not?

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66. In Dick’s autobiographical statement, what does he reveal about his true intentions the night of the Clutter murders? How does he feel about this in retrospect, and how were his intentions thwarted?

67. Who is the prosecution’s “most damaging witness,” and what effect does this witness’s testimony have on Dick’s parents?

68. Describe Don Cullivan’s visit with Perry. Why does he visit, and how does Perry react?

69. What are Dr. W. Mitchell Jones’s assessments of Dick and Perry? Why is he unable to testify to this in court?

70. Analyze Perry’s statement: “I thought [Mr. Clutter] was a very nice gentleman…I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat…[The Clutters] never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it’s just the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it.”

71. What do you think most influenced the jury’s verdict? What is the verdict, and how do Perry and Dick react?

72. Who is Lowell Lee Andrews? Why is he on Death Row, and how do Dick and Perry feel about him?

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73. Why do you suppose Perry feels the way he does about Lowell Lee Andrews?

74. Describe Perry and Dick’s experiences on Death Row.

75. Who are George York and James Latham, and why are they on Death Row? Explain the significance of Dick’s statement upon the boy’s arrival: “Yessir…[the death penalty is] very popular in Kansas. Juries hand it out like they were giving candy to kids.”

76. How does Dick feel about capital punishment? Why do you think he feels this way?

77. How does Agent Dewey feel about Dick and Perry’s deaths? Why do you suppose he feels the way he does about Perry?

Short Response Questions

Directions: Respond thoughtfully to each question with at least one complete paragraph

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Notable Quotes

Directions: In the space below, list at least 20 quotes from the text that you find significant or interesting. Make sure to include the page number!

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