#2 ICB pp. 254-279

p. 256  "I think we both felt very high.  I did.  Very high, and very relived at the same time.  Couldn't stop laughing, neither one of us; suddenly it all seemed very funny--I don't know why, it just did."  Just when Capote seems to build a case that Perry is human, he places this information into the text.  Perhaps that's what made his book so successful as the first nonfiction novel; it contains information that appeals to a complex picture of the criminals.  Too often, we just say someone is a "bad apple," so to speak.  But, nature took certain, at times deliberate steps in producing that apple--just as she takes care to produce the "good apples."  The question I find Capote posing to us over and over is "What creates the criminal mind?"  How do we move from a productive person in society to one who wreaks so much violence and heart ache?