Perry Smith and Lowell Lee Andrews’s antagonism

Perry Smith and Lowell Lee Andrews’s antagonism took shape in close quarters: their cells adjoined, they could easily speak to one another, and yet Perry usually chose silence. The relationship was not defined by open confrontation so much as by a recurring humiliation that Perry concealed and Andrews, who meant no harm, did not seem to understand. Their enforced proximity made a small difference in education and speech into a persistent source of tension.

Proximity and Uneasy Toleration

At first, the two men exchanged a few tepid reproaches. Their relationship then settled into mutual toleration, compared in the account to Siamese twins who were uncongenial but helplessly joined. The comparison captures the contradiction at the heart of their connection: neither sought intimacy, but neither could escape the other’s presence. Perry seldom spoke to Andrews despite how easily they could converse.

Perry’s silence had a practical dimension. He was cautious and secretive, and disliked having guards or other inmates overhear his private business. Andrews’s presence sharpened that reluctance. The account identifies him in particular as someone Perry would rather not risk talking in front of, because conversation could become an occasion for correction.

Education as a Source of Resentment

The underlying friction was an imbalance Perry could not comfortably acknowledge. He had gone no further than third grade, but imagined himself more learned than most people he knew and took pleasure in correcting their grammar and pronunciation. Andrews, a college-educated young man with a formal manner of speech, could in turn correct Perry. Perry experienced this not as instruction but as a humiliation, especially because Andrews was younger and seemed to possess the education Perry wanted for himself.

One correction concerned Perry’s use of the word disinterested when he meant uninterested. Andrews’s intervention was intended to help, but Perry heard it as another demonstration of the very distinction he felt unable to command. After such incidents, he would sulk and ignore meals delivered to him. He never admitted to anyone on the Row that Andrews’s corrections were the reason for his resentment, so the hostility remained outwardly unexplained even as it shaped his conduct.

Silence, Fasting, and Competing Interpretations

At the beginning of June, Perry stopped eating altogether. He told Dick that Dick could wait for the rope, but he would not. From then on, Perry refused food and water and would not speak to anyone. The fast eventually led to his transfer to the prison hospital; attempts to force-feed him met with physical resistance, and he had to be restrained and fed through a tube or intravenously. Over the following nine weeks, his weight fell from 168 pounds to 115.

The account links Perry’s silences and missed meals with the humiliations he experienced around Andrews, but it does not establish that the conflict alone caused the fast. Dick, impressed by Perry’s will, nevertheless rejected the idea that Perry meant to kill himself. Even after hearing that Perry was in a coma, Dick told Andrews he thought Perry was pretending to be crazy in hopes of being moved to a psychiatric institution. Andrews allowed a different possibility: that starving himself might mean Perry was crazy. Their disagreement shows how little either man could confidently know about Perry’s purpose, despite the intimacy of prison proximity.

Retrospective Judgment and the Limits of the Bond

In retrospect, Dick described Andrews as the person Perry most wanted to resemble in one respect: he was educated. Dick said Perry could not forgive Andrews for being able to catch and correct him, though Andrews had been trying to give Perry the education he wanted. The account also places this resentment within Perry’s broader difficulty getting along with people on the Row: Dick said Perry had no friends there and described him as sneering at others and judging their intelligence and character.

The antagonism was therefore unequal in its meaning. Andrews’s corrections were presented as well-intended, while Perry’s response was concealed, persistent, and bound up with envy and wounded pride. Their shared confinement produced no reconciliation: it imposed contact, then left Perry to choose silence. The relationship makes education more than a difference in schooling; between these cellmates, it became a measure of status that Andrews could exercise casually and Perry experienced as an exposure of what he lacked.