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On November 5, 959, in the humble community of Holcomb, Kansas, four individuals from the Clutter family were viciously murdered. This famous novel was written by American Novelist Truman Capote. The main characters in the novel are Perry Smith, Dick Hickock and the Clutter family. The Clutters were pure, loving people, although there is some naivety in their purity. The book also talks about how the murder had little to no evidence and without a single motive. The quality of the Clutters appears to originate from and rely upon self-assurance, economic well being, and money related security. Herb Clutter and his family are portrayed idyllically in the novel. This is a respected family of educated, hard working people. In Murder in Cold, they embody the ideals of the American Dream: success, stability, integrity, and piety. Capote’s innovation is that he portrays both victims and murderers as two sides of the same American phenomenon. The Clutter family is the embodiment of the achieved American Dream, and the criminals are victims of the dream of success and quick material well-being. Dewey was fifty-one, four years older than when he supervised the Clutter investigation. . . . The dream of settling on his farm had not come true, for his wifes fear of living in that sort of isolation had never lessened. Instead, the Deweys had built a n

ew house in town; they were proud of it, and proud, too, of both their sons, who were deep-voiced now and as tall as their father. The older boy was headed for college in the autumn.(Capote 34) Here the Clutters are established with a lasting connection with a permanent impression on their lives. Just like the American Dream, Dewey and his family are arranged towards what’s to come. The Clutter family is the embodiment of the achieved American Dream and the criminals are victims of the dream of success and quick material well-being. The very image of the Clutter family is given to Capote in a slow, soundly realistic manner. Capote lingers for a long time on the description of things. In part 4 he states,Since their arrest they had not been allowed to communicate, and that, freedom aside, was what he most desired– to talk to Dick, be with him again. Dick was not the ‘hardrock’ he’d once thought him:’ Pragmatic,’ ‘virile,’ ‘a real brass boy’; he’s proven himself to be ‘pretty weak and shallow,’ ‘a coward.’ Still, of everyone in all the world, this was the person to whom he was closest at that moment, for they at least were of the same species, brothers in the breed of Cain; separated from him, Perry felt ‘all by myself. Like somebody covered with sores. Somebody only a big nut would have anything to do with(Capote 259-260).