Well, this is the end. The book is finished. I'm sitting here struggling through my thoughts on the ending, as I'm trying to write this. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. I'm not going to get all emotional and all that, but there was quite a lot going on in this last part.
Dick and Perry were finally executed. They were left to hang on April 14, 1965. The final two scenes of the story were extremely chilling for me. The first being that we are brought into the warehouse where the gallows are and we see the execution for Detective Dewey's perspective.
This man is uncomfortable and disturbed by just about everything that he sees that day. He is upset by the idle and casual chatter that the other detectives engage in before the two men are led in, the hangman's restlessness over what seemed to be an execution that was taking too long for his liking, and even Perry's final parting words.
But I don't entirely blame him in the case of the latter. Perry apologized for the murders. He even says that it is probably too late and almost inappropriate, but she still apologizes. I don't know how many of you were expecting the man who killed four people to say "I'm sorry", but he did. I literally have no idea what to think. Is it sincere? Why is he saying it now? Would he have said it if there were different witnesses present at the execution? So many questions that I don't have answers to that I wish I had.
I'm a little shocked by how the entire book ended after that. I expected that the last scene we, as readers, were going to be presented with was a focus on one or both of the men hanging or one of the characters other thoughts as they presented their final thoughts about the case or the family or the murderers themselves.
While we do get a little bit of this, I wasn't expecting to see a reflection on all of this in a recalled memory for Dewey's past. He remembers a time when he went to visit his father's grave and he also ran into Nancy's childhood friend, Susan Kidwell. They shoot the breeze for a bit and before we can get any possible information about any residual feelings for the Clutters, Susan runs off in a hurry as if she is late for something. Dewey is then left to watch Susan dash away and reminisce about what a lovely young lady Nancy would have grown up to be.
To me, it seems like one of the main focuses of this book from the start and throughout a good part of the story was to present to the reader the tale of how the Clutter family was murdered and the surrounding case of the murderers fate. So this seems like an unsatisfying ending if that was the whole point of the book. We really don't have a clear way of knowing anyone's final residing thoughts on the Clutter family murders. Sure it's peaceful to think of how the wheat sways in the wind, but I wanted hear some final parting words. No big hurrah I was looking for I guess.
Overall, would I recommend this book: I honestly don't have a clear answer in this moment. I'm at home right now and my parents have walked by and seeing how I'm done, have asked how I like the book and I just don't quite know how to feel.
While the entire story and the way this was told was extremely riveting and fascinating, I don't know how I feel about the focus on Perry throughout the whole book. Does Capote have some type of bias toward Perry and is he trying to show something with this particular highlight on him? I have no idea why he decided to put this into the story, and I'm struggling to figure out what exactly he was trying to accomplish by doing this.
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