For Madmen Only!

Margo Eatmon

Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

1 August 2007

Characterization of the Murderers

Truman Capote refrains from telling the tale of a murder and two murderers, instead describing people. People killed in their homes, people with dreams of skin diving, people who found their friend dead, people who watched a man hang from a noose. People who scared, people who were not. In Cold Blood does not describe the sane vs. the insane, the innocent vs. the guilty, but talks of life in the most human form. Perry Smith’s dreams of travel are painfully evident in his treasured box of maps described by Capote (14-15). Less hopeful, but most heartbreakingly human is “A History of My Boy’s Life” by Perry’s father (125-130), which illustrates a childhood, a boyhood, a manhood, though rotten in truth, are all doused with words of a simple fathers’ love. Family conversation with the Hickocks provides a space in which Dick exists, a hole left in the world after his death (170-172). See, a “murderer” is just that: the death of person, and not a person himself, a bloody knife with no existence surrounding; but Truman Capote eloquently narrates the truth that there is no such thing as a “murderer,” a life always exists. Many readers can know alcoholic parents, or a lawless youth, or a family, or dreams. Sympathy is not requested by the author, who instead choses to enclose the facts of a life, showing “criminals” to actually be men who committed crimes. The use of outside literary sources and conversation and personal lusts does not stir sympathy for Dick, or Perry, or their awful contraventions, but instead takes me to the recognition of their humanity. I know that Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were real human men, and for that fact alone I mourn their deaths.

Margo Eatmon

Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

1 August 2007

An Eye for an Eye?

The death penalty may be the most hypocritically seated practice in the United States today, and I feel that no murderer, even one as remorseless as Dick Hickock or Perry Smith is deserving of such a punishment. A murder may warrant such a convicting practice, but a murderer is much more than the crime they commit–with a smoking gun still in hand, a killer is a child, knows the touch of another’s skin, has seen the moon, as we all have. Murderer’s live with the blood of man: they are men, women, children. Who is to decree one life less extraordinary than another? To punish capitally is to perpetuate murder, but those who dispense such legalized death comfort themselves by removing the criminal from their own plane in humanity. One detective present at the hanging of the Clutter murderers consoled another audience member: “‘The guy was a punk. A mean bastard. He deserved it.’”(Capote 339) As long as Dick was considered a “punk” or a “mean bastard” and not a father or a son, his humanity could be ignored and his death justified. If only the communities which practice punishment by death could step back and see what a human act murder is–all dumb selfishness–and with such realization note that they are not killing for punishment, but murdering for their own Homo sapien lust for blood. Richard Hickock noted, during his wait for the gallows that “‘Revenge is all it is…If I was kin to the Clutters, or an of the parties York and Latham dispensed with, I couldn’t rest in peace till the ones responsible had taken that ride on the Big Swing.’”(Capote 335) The deaths by capital punishment are not made humane because the practices of hanging, electrocution, lethal injection are not common practices by street criminals. “…Hickock hung for all to see a full twenty minutes before the prison doctor at last said, ‘I pronounce this man dead.’”(Capote 339) Richard Hickock died for twenty minutes (or five years, if his wait is counted), longer than any of the Clutters spent stepping into eternity. The audience of the hanging continued their justifications by conversing that “‘They don’t feel nothing. Drop, snap, and that’s it. They don’t feel nothing.’ ‘Are you sure? I was standing close. I could hear him gasping for breath…I suppose they feed them a lot of pills. Sedatives.’ ‘Hell, no. Against the rules.’”(Capote 340) Human desires for revenge (as noted by Hickock) overwhelm the realization that death is no punishment to those who die. Dead men don’t have to survive their crime or realize the pain they cause their loved ones. Dead men are only that: dead. Dick and Perry are dead, no differently than the Clutters are dead; murdered no differently than those they murdered. Humanity (sigh).

Margo Eatmon

Ms. Robinson

AP English 3

1 August 2007

François Villon

The French poet from whose Ballade des pendus Truman Capote excerpted to open the crime novel, In Cold Blood, is the François Villon of Paris in the mid-1400s. An ironically fitting speaker, Villon was a noted criminal in France, originally charged with the murder of a priest (a sentence from which he was royally pardoned), the poet also tested the strength of the law through his numerous acts of robbery and assault. His final arrest for brawling in 1462 proved François’ royal protection waning, as he was tortured and sentenced to death by hanging–the verdict for an ungovernable life that held greater crimes against man than literary gifts of the gods. While awaiting execution, Villon wrote (among other works) Ballade des pendus, the Ballad of the hanged. Following are the original French text and two English translations of the lines selected by Capote:

Frères humains qui après nous vivez,
N’ayez les cuers contre nous endurcis,
Car, se pitié de nous povres avez,
Dieu en aura plus tost de vous mercis . (Villon)

My brothers who live after us,
Don’t harden you hearts against us too,
If you have mercy now on us,
God may have mercy upon you. (Kline)

O Brother men who live, though we are gone,
Let not your hearts be hardened at the view,
For if you pity us you gaze upon,
God is more like to show you mercy too . . .(Brooks)

I prefer the second translation, by E Bruce Brooks, because the pleading expressed in the original French words remains: rather than a distant proverb (as Kline forces the verse to appear), the poem is the cry of a dying man. Surely Capote felt appropriate the words of a man in the same position as his own characters, Dick and Perry. The lines, though poetic, are as raw as if uttered by any man who has forfeited his life, even the poorly literate Clutter murderers. Though a nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood is the work of Truman Capote, who felt the need to speak for men whose factual representations did not suggest the mercy desired. Perhaps Capote planted the verses of Villon to remind the citizens of Kansas and the United States how they lost the mercy of God. Ironically, François Villon’s hanging sentence was revoked in exchange for life banishment from Paris, while the necks of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith broke in a state-mandated noose.

Works Cited

Brooks, Bruce E. “Villon: Ballade des Pendus.” Univeristy of Massachussetts. 05 Dec 2002. 1 Aug 2007 <http://www.umass.edu/wsp/lectures/translation/villon.html>.

Kline, A. S.. “François Villon Poems.” Poetry in Translation. 2004. 1 Aug 2007 <http://www.tonykline.co.uk/PITBR/French/Villon.htm#_Toc71176002>.

Villon, François. Ballade des pendus.