In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences 255Perry’s fantasies meet reality when he catches a large
fish in Mexico. Capote invokes the parrot when he
describes Perry looking “as though at last, and as in
one of his dreams, a tall yellow bird had hauled him
to heaven.” But, ultimately, real, tangible freedom
eludes Perry, and he remains confined to a fantasy
world. Whether due to his life history, his possible
mental illness, or some other force, Perry ignores
social responsibility, trying instead to seize freedom
by murder or theft. Writing about a cold-blooded
murderer, Capote paradoxically communicates the
deep sadness of a man whose dreams are dominated
by freedom and happiness, but whose reality is
dominated by imprisonment and violence.
Like Perry, Dick is physically and mentally
confined. As the result of a severe car accident
in which he sustained a head injury, Dick suffers
crippling migraines and is unable to act according
to his moral values. Although Dick teases Perry
for his boyish fantasies, his sense of freedom is
informed by fantasies, too. Instead of dreaming of
sunken treasure, Dick enacts a fantasy-based outlaw
existence. He plots a murder, steals cars, writes bad
checks, spends money on alcohol and prostitutes,
and siphons gas to drive across the country. One of
his favorite memories is when he was stranded as
an 18-year-old in the Colorado Rockies with only
a gun, a radio, a little food, and some whiskey. It
is a memory on which he bases a jailbreak scheme
while he sits on death row. Dick’s fantasies of rug-
ged individualism are rooted in a popular American
fantasy of the lone, independent male hero who is
responsible only to himself and his own survival.
This brand of individualism comes at the cost of
alienation from society.
Dick and Perry’s freedom is antisocial. It is
contingent on murder, theft, and escape rather than
on responsibility to society. Like the poem Perry
pretends to have written about “a race of men that
don’t fit in,” Dick and Perry have the “curse of gypsy
blood, / And they don’t know how to rest.” Because
the curse leads not to Dick and Perry’s freedom but
to their imprisonment, In Cold Blood raises questions
about the responsibilities and costs of individual
freedom. Capote complicates these questions by
exploring Dick and Perry’s histories and psyches,
considering not just two criminals who must pay for
their crimes, but two men struggling to make their
realities conform to their fantasies of freedom.
Ethan Myersillness in In Cold Blood
Dick Hickock, the accomplice to the murder that
supplies the driving action for Truman Capote’s
In Cold Blood, insists throughout the text that he
is “a normal,” but his psychiatric evaluation prior
to the murder trial reveals characteristics typical of
a “severe character disorder.” Unable to deal with
frustration except through antisocial behavior, he
overcompensates for low self-esteem by lying, brag-
ging, and fantasizing about being rich and powerful,
and he has a “pathological inability” to sustain posi-
tive relationships. Although not indicative of mental
illness, Dick’s pedophiliac tendencies are a source of
great shame: He is more fearful of people discover-
ing his deviant sexual fantasies than he is of hang-
ing. What is, however, partially indicative of mental
illness according to Dick and Perry’s psychiatrist,
Dr. Jones, is that Dick’s moral convictions appear
to have little impact on his actions. In reference to
his impulses for theft and pedophilia, Dick says, “I
know it is wrong. But at the time I never give any
thought to whether it is right or wrong.” Dr. Jones
notes that the majority of Dick’s antisocial behavior
has occurred since his car accident in 1950, when he
received severe head trauma. He experiences crip-
pling migraines, hemorrhages from his nose and
ear, and he once removed a piece of glass that had
worked its way out of his head via the corner of his
eye. Despite evidence that Dick suffers from men-
tal illness due to a possible brain injury, the court
is uninterested in gradations of mental health and
bypasses Dr. Jones’s psychiatric evaluation.
In his confession to the Clutter murder, Perry
Smith says that he never meant to harm Herb
Clutter; he thought Herb was a nice, soft-spoken
man—“I thought so right up to the moment I cut
his throat.” The emotional detachment of this state-
ment is not only cold-blooded but is also evidence
of “mental abnormality,” according to Dr. Jones.
Perry outlived an alcoholic and absentee mother, an
alcoholic sister who fell out a window to her death,
and a brother who shot himself after driving his
wife to suicide. In an orphanage run by nuns, Perry