Cold Blood :: Character Analysis, Perry Smith

In Tru homosexual hooded coats non-fiction novel In C doddery Blood, the Clutter familys murderers, Perry metalworker and Dick Hickock, are exposed like never before. The novel allows the contributor to experience an intimate understanding of the murderers pasts, thoughts, and feelings. It goes into great situation of Smith and Hickocks pasts which helps to explain the path of life they were walking confidential information up to the murders, as well as the thoughts that were running through their minds after the killings.Perry Smith was a short man with a large torso. At first glance, he seemed a to a greater extent modal(prenominal)-sized man, a powerful man, with the shoulders, the arms, the thick, crouching torso of a weight lifter. However when he stood up he was no taller than a twelve-year old child (15). What Smith lacked in stature, he made up in knowledge. Perry was a dictionary buff, a devotee of obscure words (22). As an adolescent, he craved books and loved to gain insight of the imaginary worlds he escaped into, for Perrys reality was nothing less than a living nightmare. His mother was an watersp expose and had strangled to death on her own vomit (110). Smith had two sisters and an older brother. His sister Fern had connected suicide by jumping out of a window and his brother Jimmy followed Ferns suit and committed suicide the day after his wife had killed herself. Perrys sister, Barbara, was the only normal one and had made a good life for herself. These traumatic events leave Perry mentally unstable and ultimately landed him in jail, where he came into liberty with Dick Hickock, who was in jail for passing bad checks. Dick and Perry became friends and this sunrise(prenominal) friendship changed the course of their lives forever. Hickock immediately made note of Perrys ridiculous personality and stated that there was something wrong with Little Perry. Perry could be such(prenominal) a kid, always wetting his bed and crying in his sle ep. And practically Dick had seen him sit for hours just sucking his thumb. In some ways old Perry was spooky as hell. Take, for instance, that temper of his of his. He could slide into a delirium quicker than ten drunk Indians. And yet you wouldnt know it. He might be ready to kill you, but youd never know it, not to look at it or listen to it (108). Perrys short fuse and dysfunctional background were the two pieces to Perrys screw up life puzzle that soured and tainted the final picture.