In Cold Blood

Raffi writes:
 
            My independent reading book, In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, is about the murder of a family in Kansas, which took place in November 15, 1959.  I have just gotten to the point in the novel after the family was murdered and their neighbors are discovering the bodies.  The novel so far switches back between the story of the Clutters (the victims), and the two criminals, whose names are Dick and Perry. The Clutters are a family who live in Holcomb, Kansas, and are possibly the most well known and well respected people around the area.  Mr. Clutter is a successful man, chairman of the Kansas Conference of Farm Organizations.  The Clutter children are all very bright and kind kids, especially Nancy, a very intelligent girl who Capote describes teaching another young girl how to bake pies.  The only person in the Clutter family who is really different from the rest is Mrs. Clutter, who is in bad health and has been a psychiatric patient for the past six years.  
          When Truman Capote introduces Dick and Perry, neither of them seem like your typical criminal.  Rather than being rough and tough, Dick and Perry seem more like intellectual and sophisticated young men each with dreams of settling down ad having a family some day.  Eventually Capote does go into a little bit of detail about their criminal background, and talks about each character’s time in jail.  He doesn’t even make the pair seem like bad guys, which is what still confuses me about why they chose to murder the Clutter family.  One of the strange things about the murder is that Dick and Perry act as if they were obliged to do it.  During the course of their trip to Holcomb Kansas, they continually speak of the murder as if it were something they had to get out of the way before they could move on with their lives.