The most
dynamic character is Dick. He is the one with ideas; he is the one who makes things happen.
Arguably the central event of the Clutter murders is really down to him, even if its Perry who
instigates the actual killing. But the whole plan of robbing the Clutters is Dicks, after the
idea is put into his head by his former cellmate Floyd Wells. Then, when they dont get the money
that they expected from the Clutters, he goes on concocting various schemes to make money,
selling gear, passing bad cheques, travelling about the country. Even their final capture comes
about when Dick takes the huge risk of returning to Kansas.
Although Perry
also has ideas €“ mainly impractical schemes of diving for buried gold off the Mexican coast €“
it is Dick who has the drive and energy to actually do things. Perry generally just goes along
with him, as he says subsequently:
The mood I was in, I
just let myself be carried along.
Perry thus appears
somewhat passive, but in allowing himself to be swept along by Dick, he helps create the
circumstances for the brutal murder. Although Dick sets the whole thing up, it seems he would
never actually have had the nerve to go through with murder, but Perry does. Perry, on his side,
would probably never have planned such an undertaking by himself. Together, however, the two men
make for a lethal combination.
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