Anyone Except the Clutters: the Question of Meaning in Capote’s in Cold Blood

A strange thing betides when large number standardised the Clutters experience an undeserved misfortune. Perhaps misfortune is an under contestation in the Clutters case, but the point is that when bad things happen to bully people, every i around them stinkpot non help but skepticism the nature of good and evil with that comes the existence of God. capote put it better(p) in the quote he included from the schoolteacher Feeling wouldnt run half so high if this had happened to any unriv all(prenominal)ed except the Clutters. Anyone less admired. Prosperous. Secure. plainly that family represented everything people here about(predicate)s really value and respect, and that such a thing could happen to them well , its like being told in that location is no God. It get outs life seem pointless. (88) The question of why bad things happen to good people is a very loaded question one that is broader than the scope of this essay. The goal of this essay will be to determine what Ca potes answer to this question is, at least in the scope of this novel. Does he believe that the Clutters died for a movement, or that it was simply a stochastic act that they were caught up in by chance?Throughout the novel, the one character who is completely consumed by the question of meaning is Detective Dewey. His committal to finding the Clutters murderers is driven by his belief that he might abruptly see something, that a meaning(prenominal) detail would decl are itself (83). The Clutters murder didnt seem to have any apparent meaning. But Detective Dewey was non alone in his belief that the actions people do are meaningful that the flatts that occur in this world have an order, a design.This belief is prevalent, curiously in religious groups, and we learn in the novel that Holcomb, Kansas is part of the record book Belt (34). It was definitely a religious town, and the Clutters were churchgoing folk. Dewey, for this reason, cannot escape believe there is a reason for everything, and that the Clutters death had a purpose. Is that what Capote wishes to promulgate us? Because I have a difficult time instinct what purpose there could be for a hard-working, wealthy family of four to be murdered in their beds for a few dollars and a radio (103).The construction of this novel is rather strange for a murder-mystery it is not told chronologically the darkness of the murder is skipped over until the very end. More importantly, we are told right from the branch of the novel that the four Clutters are murdered, and we recognize who murdered them. For a ordinary murder-mystery, the revelation of the killer is always the climax of the action. In fact, Capote has accustomed us more than the names of the killers he gives us insight into their lives, and thoughts, tip up the murders.The reason for this is because Capote has fashioned a novel where we are not reading to find out who perpetrated the crime, but why the killers killed the Clutters. I th ink, of all the characters in this novel, Dewey is the tho one who tries to answer this question. In fact, the reason why he believes that the killers to be motivated by personal interests, even though the deaths were brutal and without apparent motive (70), is because he believes that there must(prenominal) be something he is not seeing.He mentions several times that the guard department didnt have all the facts (70) and didnt really know what they were dealing with. He looks at all the clues analyses all the data interviews all the townspeople who had grudges, business, or any reason to dislike the Clutters. He knows that the randomness he is seeing doesnt make sense, but he cant figure out the key, the clue, the mystery that will make their deaths make sense. Dewey thinks that the key to understanding why the Clutters died is their killers. If he can find who killed the Clutters whence he will know why they killed the Clutters.Unfortunately, all of the knowledge about the cr imes from those who committed it does not give Dewey any definitive answers But the confessions, though they answered questions of how and why, failed to satisfy his sense of meaningful design. The crime was a psychological accident, just about an impersonal act the victims might as well have been killed by lightning. (245) I dont think that this is a fair statement for Dewey to make, although he is the character that would definitely believe this way. Saying that the Clutters might as well have bee killed by lightning (245) is to say that anything could have killed them.While this is authorized in the sense that anyone could die at any given moment, it is not true in the sense that the killers could not have been just anybody. The Clutters were a good, white, well-off and (reasonably) happy. Though when we read this novel, we may not feel super attached to the Clutters, we can easily see that they were good people. Their neighbours have only nice things to say about them, and th e town thinks that of all the people in the world, they were the least likely to be murdered (85). They were not the kind of people who made otherwise people want to murder them.The killings could be say to have been impersonal, but I think that the more advance statement is not that anything could have killed the Clutters, but that nib and Perry could have killed anyone. The Clutters were the peremptory part of the equation. The only reason they were chosen over any other family was the fact that they were tipped off about a safe on their property. If they had never been told about the safe I believe that Dick and Perry, in all likelihood, would never have met the Clutters. The killers, particularly Dick, were prepared to kill up to twelve people that November night.Dick had no way of knowing who would be there, but knew that it didnt matter who was there, he would do what he had to in order to secure his and Perrys venture. That they only got a radio and 40 or 50 dollars out of the bargain was secondary. The Clutters were the epitome of the American Dream, embodying a lifestyle that all Americans could relate to. But if they die and there is no reason for it, no meaning to it, then that means that the American Dream, by extension, is also dead it would be like being told there is no God (88).If the American Dream is dead, then being a good person is not enough to protect you from the bad things in the world. I think that though Capote has Dewey searching for meaning to this tragedy, I would fence that Dewey never finds what he is searching for. The perpetrators were expected to be monsters evil ruthful at least. But I dont think Dick and Perry fulfilled the publics idea of the Clutters murderers. ? flora Cited Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood. Toronto Random House, 1993. Print.