One thing that I thought to be very interesting in the second part of In Cold Blood is when Perry recalls a recurring dream. In this dream he is rescued from danger by a yellow parrot, who “wings him away to paradise.” In the course of his retelling, Capote offers hints of a troubled childhood. Dick ridicules the dream and Perry, whom he recalls from their early days in prison to be overly fretful, sensitive and romantic, “such a kid.” Perry, on the other hand, regards Dick’s cavalier machismo with a mixture of awe and disdain. In prison, Perry recalls, “he’d wanted Dick’s friendship, wanted Dick to ‘respect’ him, think him ‘hard,’ as much the ‘masculine type’ as he had considered Dick to be” (111). For this reason, Perry invented a story about murdering a roommate with a bicycle chain,which Dick began to regard him as a possible accomplice, and perhaps even someone to be “afraid of” (109).
Perry’s dream of the yellow parrot, offers him salvation from the abusive nuns of his childhood, and later from other “tormenting” figures in his life. This gives us reason to believe that all of his dreams are a kind of coping mechanism, a way of compensating for misfortunes he has suffered. There is a point at which Perry’s self-protecting mechanisms become a kind of self-pitying self-aggrandizement. A tension begins to emerge between Perry’s perception of himself as exceptional , misunderstood, unsuited for conventional living, and the fact that others have, throughout his life, looked down on him, viewed him as inferior or inadequate. Based off that idea i thought it was interesting that perry wanted Dick to think of him as “hard,” or “masculine,” he has invented a story about murdering a stranger, which impresses Dick. But to Dick's advantage, Dick uses Perry as a foil for his own self-image, belittling him for his superstitions and sensitive outlook. Next to Perry, Dick considers himself to be “a normal.” Moreover, Dick has been pretending to go along with Perry’s schemes, not actually believing a word of them or intending to follow through, creating a potentially volatile scenario in which Perry will feel slighted or betrayed when he realizes Dick’s true feelings.