Throughout In Cold Blood Capote goes through the lives of the killers, Dick and Perry. Both convicts released from jail and at first glance seem to have a lot in common, but as the book continues the reader can see that the two characters are in fact very different. To characterize the killers Capote frequently uses flashbacks into their pasts, giving the reader a sense of what their lives were like and why they became who they are. Capote also utilizes detailed descriptions of the men’s appearances, quirks, and habits to characterize the murderers.
From the moments in the book when we read about the brutal murders of such a benevolent family the killers appear to be nothing more than violent, cold hearted brutes, to be capable of committing such a terrible crime without no apparent motive. As Dick and Perry are running away from the village of Holcomb, Capote begins to delve into the lives of the men. Perry’s past reveals an unstable household, an alcoholic mother, and an abusive childhood as Capote flashes back in Perry’s memories “when he was seven a hated, half-breed child living in a California orphanage run by nuns—shrouded disciplinarians who whipped him for wetting his bed. One of these beatings, one he could never forget. She woke me up she had a flashlight, and she hit me with it. Hit me and hit me. And when the flashlight broke, she went on hitting me in the dark(Capote 93) .” Later on Perry’s memories flashback again as he remembers his family “his mother, an alcoholic, had strangled to death on her own vomit. Of her children, two sons and two daughters, only the younger girl had entered ordinary life…the other daughter jumped out of a window…the older boy who had one day driven his wife to suicide and killed himself the next(Capote 110-111).” The reader knows that Perry has had a childhood that no child deserves to have, with so much emotional and