Psychological Trauma in Truman Capotes In Cold Blood :: In Cold Blood Essays

Brian Conniff's article, "Psychological Accidents: In Cold Blood and Ritual Sacrifice," explains how Truman Capote's nonfiction novel demonstrates the psychological trauma that the murderers and the townspeople of Holcomb face after the murders of the Clutter family. Conniff begins his article by stating that in the last twenty-five years imprisonment and execution has reached an all-time high level of obsession among the American public. Since this type of violence has been so normalized it is rarely properly understood (1). With this in mind, prison literature has continually suggested that "the most fortified barriers are not the physical walls and fences between the prison, and the outside world; the most fortified barriers are the psychological walls between the preoccupations of everyday life . . .and the conscious realization that punishment is the most self-destructive kind of national addiction" (Conniff 1). Conniff believes that these psychological walls are most confronted in and clearly seen in In Cold Blood. When Perry Smith, one of the murderers, confesses to the crime to Agent Alvin Dewey, Agent Dewey is surprisingly disappointed. Agent Dewey discovers that the truth is more disturbing than anything he would have ever imagined. Conniff writes, "The truth, Dewey discovers, is at once more ordinary and more disturbing than anything he has been able to imagine" (2). Smith and Hickock did not murder the Clutters for revenge and they didn't even know their victims. The crime was a virtually impersonal act and Agent Dewey does not want to believe this (2). At first Capote was not concerned with the capture and punishment of the criminals. Capote underestimated the community's need for retribution and its need to return to normalcy by enacting a violence of its own (2). Before the murders the community lived an unfearful life, no locked doors, no suspicion of one another. This "normalcy" could not be restored until the murderers were caught and punished (2). When the community began to lock its doors at night, it was trying to keep the invader from outside the community out (2). When the Hickock and Smith were finally caught the community categorized them as animals, this "allowed the community to deprive them of their humanity" (2). Conniff goes on to say, "a common normalcy ultimately depends upon the complete exclusion of outsiders, the exorcism of these mysterious animals is just as important as their discovery and capture" (3).