“[A]fterward the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating [the gun shots] over and again—those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.”

As Capote depicts it, Holcomb is an idealized version of small-town America: a place where everyone knows, trusts, and helps one another. It’s so idealized that it at times recalls the Garden of Eden. Herbert later makes the association explicit when describing the potential of Holcomb’s land and soil, but it’s also evident in the community’s abundant resources and simple way of life. This innocence, however, is shattered overnight as a result of the Clutter murders, and the fear and suspicion described in the above passage mark a figurative fall from paradise.

“Always certain of what he wanted from the world, Mr. Clutter had in large measure obtained it.” 

More than any other character in the novel, Herbert embodies the American Dream. Through perseverance, self-discipline, and sacrifice, he makes nearly all his dreams a reality; Capote recounts, for instance, how Clutter “labored eighteen hours a day” for years in order to transform the small amount of land he leased into the large and profitable farm he now owns outright (13). He also enjoys success in his personal life, courting and marrying Bonnie despite the social obstacles involved in a “plain farm [man]” like himself pursuing one of the “well-to-do and cultivated Foxes” (30). The idea that anyone could wish to harm a man who adheres so closely to the American ideal is part of what makes the Clutter murders so distressing to the other residents of Holcomb.