At this part of In Cold Blood, Herb Clutter is being sold life insurance for which he buys with double indemnity. The conversation at hand is being held, unbeknownst to either Clutter or Johnson, hours before the Clutter family’s untimely massacre. Capote uses Clutter’s interaction with Johnson as an opportunity to give the reader a snippet of Clutter as a person rather than words on paper. By using Johnson, a run of the mill insurance salesman, to characterize Clutter this gives the reader an honest perception of Clutter versus the perception of facts and answers from the writer himself. Throughout the first chapter, Capote fixates on how ‘presentable’ the Clutter family really is, which forces the reader to root for this family. Furthermore,
