Death Penalty In Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

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Since the 19th century, the morality of capital punishment has been questioned and discussed again and again. One prominent author in American history, Truman Capote, approached this sensitive topic in his award-winning novel: In Cold Blood. In the novel, two men known as Dick Hickock and Perry Smith murder the unsuspecting Clutter family in their obscure town of Holcomb, Kansas. Once caught and proved guilty with numerous pieces of evidence, the criminals are put on trial and ultimately sentenced to death row. However, their fates are questioned for nearly six years before they are finally executed. Throughout his nonfiction novel, Capote argues that capital punishment is a cruel and unjustifiable sentence through the use of simile, analogy, …show more content…
When Perry, one of the two criminals soon to be put on death row, discovers that an acquaintance he met in the army will be visiting him, he quickly begins planning for the small social event. As he excitedly cleans his jail cell and soon-to-be dining room, he recognizes that he holds more concern for the dinner menu than the trial that will decide his fate: “...the outcome of the trial (which, to be sure, he did not consider a suspenseful matter): ‘Those prariebillys, they’ll vote to hang fast as pigs eat slop. I’ll be damned if I’m the only killer in the courtroom’” (Capote, 289). By comparing the townspeople to pigs, which are viewed as vile and gluttonous creatures, Capote dehumanizes the town of Holcomb. He conveys to the audience that, in a merciless sense of animalistic revenge, the townspeople crave to have the two criminals hanged. In doing so, Capote displays that the townspeople’s arguments behind their requests of capital punishment are not substantiated and are personally …show more content…
As the end of the trial nears, Perry’s defense attorney, Arthur Fleming, is brought forward to defend his client against capital punishment for his murderous actions: “Then the pleas of the defense attorneys had to be heard… ‘He has a body, and he has a soul that lives forever. I don’t believe man has the right to destroy that house, a temple, in which the soul dwells.’” (Capote, 303) By comparing man and his soul to that of a house and its inhabitant, Capote continues his argument that capital punishment is an indefensible and barbaric sentence. A home is a place of security that should be free from intentional destruction before its natural fall. Therefore, his comparison conveys that capital punishment is a cruel and unforgivable threat to the body of a man before the occurrence of his natural death. Although the two murderers killed the Clutters before the time of their natural deaths, enacting capital punishment on the criminals would only turn it into an infinite cycle of
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