Monday, October 26, 2009
So far in my reading, pages 1-27, I have been introduced to the killers, the victims, and some random people who don’t seem to have any relationship to the murder itself other then knowing the victims. There were a few people who might give motive to killing the Clutters but I don’t understand why the killers (Perry and Dick) would want to kill them. On page 5 it says “four shot gun blasts that, all told, ended six lives” (5). At first four shots to six people didn’t match up but when knowing the family and the killers two ideas came to mind. One was that the two eldest daughters died in a physiological state from the loss of their family. The other idea was that possibly the killers themselves were being included by the author, Truman Capote, as dying. Another curious statement Capote made about the atmosphere after the killing was “found fantasy re-creating them over and again- those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely and as strangers”(5). I feel like this comment by Capote was to say not only that this killing would change lives forever but he also wanted to state the natural tendencies of people and their trust. It takes a really long time for a community to build such trust with each other as Holcomb did, but it takes one event in which trust is broken and all is lost, ultimately, turning people against each other as if they were complete strangers. I am curious to know if we find out whether the city of Holcomb will ever be the way they once were as we are told about in the beginning of the story. I have a theory that the killing might have stemmed from more than just the two killers, as in an inside job. I get this impression by the description of the farm and such, “it was not a place that strangers came upon by chance” (13). I feel like Dick and Perry killed them because they were told or hired to and not out of their own enjoyment. My only question is who would want the Clutters dead, why were to two eldest alive and the rest killed, and why would someone want such a nice family dead? I also think that both Perry and Dick love each other through lust or a physical attracted just as I think Mr. Clutter and Mrs. Clutter do. Capote says “the primary reason Perry had been attracted to him, for it made Dick seem, Compared to himself, so authentically tough, invulnerable, “totally masculine”(16). Here Perry is attracted to Dick for his physical features. Capote also says about the Clutters “However, Herb was handsome, he was pious, he was strong-willed, he wanted her-and she was in love” (26). Once more the relationship between the Clutters is a desire for each other and the physical attractions that Mrs. Clutter has, my question is, when you finally get what you want, do you still want it? And for the Clutters I don’t think they do and I’m wondering if this will be a paradox to the motive behind the killing. If desire for something fades when you finally get that something, could that possibly explain why the Clutters are so distant to each other?
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I’ve finished the reading at this point and would like to comment on Nikki's posts, first about the questioning behind, “the four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives" (5). I disagree in thinking that lives they are referring to, are the lives of the distant sisters. Instead, I believe that the 2 other lives that "ended" were the lives of Susan Kidwell and Bobby Ruff however not in the literal sense. Both of these two teenagers lives after this moment, will be completely upturned and altered and they are both extremely un-reversibly pained, "for Susan, puffy-eyed, sickened by spasms of nausea, argued, inconsolably insisted, that she must go - must run - the three miles to the Rupp farm. 'Don't you see, Mother?' she said. 'If Bobby just hears it? He loved her. We both did. I have to be the one to tell him" (71).
ReplyDeleteI, like Nikki, through some portions of the book began to get the feeling that some sort of “inside job” was present. The biggest thing that began to make me believe this was when Perry was explaining the note he had received from Perry after thinking he would never see him again. He said, “After you left I met someone, you do not know him, but he put me on to something we could bring off Beautiful. A cinch, the Perfect score…” (44). I interpreted this as possibly someone paying Perry or offering him the opportunity to knock out the Clutter family. Another hint to this was at the very end of the section where Dick falls asleep watching basketball and his father is awestruck; “But of course, he did not understand how very tired Dick was, did not know that his dozing son had, among other things, driven over eight hundred miles in the past twenty-four hours” (74). Without knowing the Clutters or seeming to have any personal advantage or gain from their deaths, it seems to me worthless for an “over eight hundred mile” drive to Holcomb Kansas, which leads me to believe that there was some kind of alterior/inside motive.