The Other Side of the Story

             After thoroughly describing the whole Clutter family and their relationships both among them and with their community, Capote now turns to describe the other face of the event. This occurs in a very sudden manner. It is a jump from one extreme to the other. I found it very surprising to see the instant change of location and atmosphere when the narrator states, “Approximately four hundred miles east of where Arthur Clutter then stood, two young men were sharing a booth in Eagle Buffet, a Kansas City diner” (p. 89). At first, this seems like a random comment, but further on in the reading, I could connect several points. First, it is important to highlight that Capote introduces Arthur Clutter, at least in this part of the book, in order to link what he said about the murderers being very close to where they were standing and the story of the murderers. He does this in a way which is very sudden and unexpected by the reader, but at the same time it still is connected to the trajectory of the book.

            As I kept on reading, I learned through Capote’s detailed descriptions about the two murderers and their chains of thought. I found it impressive to observe can give such a great amount of information in only a sentence. For example, when Perry says, “Anyway, I don’t believe it. Neither do you. Own up, Dick. Be honest. You don’t believe this no-clue stuff?” (p. 89). Here, one can see that Perry is the dominant individual of the two. He assumes and almost forces Dick to think the same as he does. Also, I can infer that they are both very nervous about being caught, but are trying to disguise this anxiety by reassuring each other that the police of the town is not that intelligent in order to find out it was them. However, the main question still remains unanswered: Why were the Clutters murdered? Hopefully, with the opposite perspective of the murderers some clues will be given out.