Book Review – “The Bad Seed”

Three Stars out of Five

Sometimes I like to challenge myself by reading books outside of my usual genre choices. This title was vaguely familiar to me, but I had never read it before. I do enjoy a good mystery, I appreciate deep dives into the human psyche, and I was picking up some Hitchcock-esque vibes, so I decided to give it a try. But was it a blooming good time or a weedy little venture?

The Bad Seed, by William March, is a stand-alone mystery thriller novel set in the mid-1950s. Here, readers are introduced to the rather old fashioned, intelligent, demure eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark. To her parents and neighbors, she is the model of what every little girl should strive to be – prim, polite, and intelligent. However, even her mother, Christine, begins to wonder about her daughter’s strange behaviors and emotional reactions – or lack thereof. One day, a picnic turns deadly when a child drowns in an apparent accident. But as pieces to the puzzle emerge, Christine begins to suspect the child’s death was no accident, and it’s possible Rhoda might be to blame. Will Christine discover the truth to what lies in her daughter’s heart – that she just might be a killer hiding in plain sight?

This novel should definitely not be confused with the children’s book of the same name. Though I might echo a line from that book’s blurb: This is a book about a bad seed. A baaaaaaaaaad seed. How bad? Do you really want to know?

But seriously – do you really want to know how bad this book’s titular bad seed is?

Because little Rhoda is one baaaaaaaaaad seed.

I don’t generally gravitate towards suspense/thrillers, yet I was drawn to this story. It harbors elements of mystery with a dash of Hitchcock-style horror. While the plot is fairly lean, this is because The Bad Seed is a character-centered story as it explores the psyche of a child killer: not from the child’s perspective, but from the viewpoint of everyone around her who is convinced she’s an okay kid. In truth, Rhoda is anything but. She’s polite and sweet, but she’s also secretive, emotionally unresponsive, and views people’s value only in what she can take from them. The way she is depicted in the novel is chilling, especially as the reader knows something is amiss while the rest of the cast don either blinders or rose-tinted glasses.

So it begs the question: based on her behaviors and personality, is Rhoda a sociopath or psychopath? These terms get tossed around often and are erroneously used interchangeably, and both have been evoked to summarize Rhoda’s mental state. In reality, they’re two different anti-social personality disorders.

In brief, sociopaths have a limited, albeit weak, ability to feel empathy and remorse. They’re also more likely to fly off the handle and react violently when confronted by the consequences of their actions. Thus, such persons tend to be hot-headed and impulsive and make it clear they do not care how others feel. On the other hand, sometimes sociopaths can form emotional attachments, though it’s difficult, and often recognize what they are doing but rationalize their behavior. In contrast, psychopaths have little or no conscience but are able to follow social conventions when it suits their needs. Furthermore, such persons pretend to care, display cold-hearted behavior, fail to recognize other people’s distress, have relationships that are shallow and fake, maintain a normal life as a cover for criminal activity, fail to form genuine emotional attachments, [and] may love people in their own way.

Based on these definitions, Rhoda is undoubtedly a psychopath as she puts on airs of normalcy; acts the way she suspects people want her to act; forms superficial attachments; displays no remorse or emotional reaction to distressing events; and seeks to possess other’s prizes, claiming what others value for herself. Christine, her mother, even muses, “What an actress Rhoda is. She knows exactly how to handle people when it’s to her advantage to do so.” Thus, Rhoda knows how to manipulate situations and people, not only to get what she wants, but also to make people think how she wants them to think. It’s sort of like a “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” scenario where Rhoda is calling all the shots, behaving sweet and good so as to throw curious onlookers off her trail, while she carries out dark deeds in secret.

Interestingly enough, most of the characters are oblivious to the truth about Rhoda, and the word psychopath is never uttered in the novel despite one character’s fascination with psychology and another’s interest in serial killers. Normally, I would be annoyed at characters’ ignorance, but in this case it makes sense as it’s not intended to be a mark of stupidity. Christine doesn’t want to believe the worst about her own daughter yet fears she may have to. Monica, a nosy neighbor, pretends to be well-versed in psychology yet never once suspects that Rhoda is a bit off. School personnel sense something is amiss with the little girl but can’t put a proverbial finger on it. But Rhoda never has readers fooled, and that’s the point. Part of this book’s mystery element is not so much did Rhoda do all of these horrible things but when will everyone figure out that she’s done horrible things.

Certainly the prevailing theme is the classic debate of nature versus nurture: was Rhoda “born this way” or was it something in her environment or upbringing that turned her into what she is. Christine believes she raised Rhoda well, giving her affection and attention, which leads her to wonder if Rhoda was born with a leaning towards murderous inclinations. Christine never draws any definitive conclusions, leaving the matter up to readers’ interpretation, which I think was the smart way to play it. In truth, Rhoda is neither in possession of an innate desire to kill nor has she been raised to view violence as a social norm. She simply possesses a sin-infected heart that covets what others have, which compels her to use any means necessary to acquire what she desires while she remains unrepentant.

The novel’s central latent message upholds the truth of mankind’s inherent sinful nature. Even in a child, proclivities towards deceit, lying, covetousness, and violence are present. The angle the story intends to take appears early in a conversation Christine overhears: violence was an inescapable factor of the heart…an ineradicable thing that lay like a bad seed, behind kindness, behind compassion, behind the embrace of love itself. Sometimes it lay deeply hidden, sometimes it lay close to the surface; but always it was there, ready to appear, under the right conditions, in all its irrational dreadfulness.

This echos Jeremiah 17:9, which states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” And it is not just Rhoda who exhibits a sinful nature: other characters think and commit acts that, while perhaps not as extreme as murder, are still impure in intent. Again, the implication is that evil begets evil, regardless how high or low on the “sin scale” one wishes to measure it. As Romans 2:8-9 states, “[…] for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil […].”

Thus, the biggest question the novel asks is who, exactly, is the titular “bad seed?” Certainly Rhoda, but the book gives readers room to muse if there are other characters who fit the bill, too. While this is not a Christian book by any means, and the novel itself even wonders whether morality originates from God or from man, it does accurately show the full extent of what a sin-filled heart is capable of – even if it’s the heart of a child. In the end, all of this shows how man’s attempts to counter evil on his own, without submitting his sinful nature to Christ, will always fail. Thus, in a subtle way, The Bad Seed shows that, without God, sin leads to death, and man’s best attempts to erase sin on his own are doomed to fail.

Now as far as that ending goes…

…I think it broke me. It’s devastating, I won’t lie!

I want to discuss it briefly without spoilers because it deserves a closer look. I just have to be as vague as possible. So I’ll compare this novel’s ending to the ending of Alien 3 (don’t laugh!). Just as in Alien 3 when the xenomorph is killed but the characters discover another possible alien threat, one character decides to sacrifice themselves to stop the threat because, if left unattended, more trouble is sure to come. That’s essentially how The Bad Seed ends, with a threat needing to be neutralized and a character seeing only one possible solution. It’s heartbreaking, to say the least, but seemingly necessary. Only at least in Alien 3 the alien threat is quelled – in The Bad Seed it’s protracted.

All of that being said, The Bad Seed isn’t without its flaws, hence why I couldn’t award it more than three stars. One large issue lies in its tell-don’t-show approach, which often manifests itself in extended info-dump-y scenes. While I definitely think it was better to leave some acts up readers’ imaginations, some events would have had a heavier emotional impact if they had been allowed to unfold on the page rather than simply recounted later as a character gives or reads an account of what occurred. (For instance, one character’s demise, which plays out on-page, carries more weight than one, as heartbreaking as it is, that occurs entirely off-page.)

It’s also worth noting that, despite this being a product of the 1950s, it’s not as squeaky clean as one might assume. Most of the violence occurs off-page, but there is a foreboding undertone coursing throughout. Likewise, while no actual sexual activity occurs on page, some characters direct their thoughts towards the sexual realm but it never turns graphic. Also of note, the novel does depict an adult man taking an obsessive interest in an underage child; and while nothing inappropriate occurs, the book makes it no secret that the adult man harbors some sort of secret (and creepy) crush on the child. Lastly, while it’s understandable that this book wasn’t intended to be an uplifting read or even one with a semi-happy ending, its open-ended conclusion might not sit well with readers who require more closure nor those who prefer to see evil eradicated rather than being allowed to survive.

Overall, The Bad Seed is not a cheery book. It’s a devastating and somewhat frustrating read, yet, in context, it all comes together. Readers searching for a suspenseful story with sharp edges that manages to keep most of its worst crimes off-page might find much to appreciate here. The same goes for persons who enjoy reading more about the mentality of a murderer rather than about murder itself. While not for everyone, especially considering its subject matter and some of its off-page content, The Bad Seed sows good conversation starters about human nature and sinful leanings, but it just misses the mark by not allowing these to come to fruition, thus providing a solidified moral to its tale.

Content:
Language – Occasional PG-13-level language is spoken, chiefly religious exclamations (such as using the name of Jesus Christ as a swear) and the word b-tch.

Violence – Nothing in terms of anything graphic or gory, but there is still plenty of off-page peril. One large plot element is a child’s drowning, which occurs off-page. A character muses over other past acts of violence, such a puppy’s demise after falling out of a window (mostly off-page) and a woman slipping and falling to her death (also mostly off-page). Elsewhere, we’re told about a news story of a woman who poisons her niece in order to obtain insurance money, and we’re told how another character would poison former spouses. A character commits suicide on-page. A character intentionally causes another person to overdose on sleeping pills. Another character is killed after being locked in a room that’s later set ablaze. There are also frequent discussions about female serial killers. One such woman has her crimes discussed at some length, which include decapitating someone, carrying a severed head in a parcel, and murdering children (though one child escapes). We’re also told that this woman was later executed by electrocution (there is some description of an archived photo of the event). As a rule, most of the deaths and crimes occur off-page and are discussed in a frank but non-graphic manner.

Sexual Content – While there are no on-page sex scenes or nudity, there are numerous allusions to sex though nothing is graphically discussed. Leroy mentally entertains thoughts of abducting a neighbor and doing all manner of things to her in his basement, leaving her begging for more (the implication, then, is he wishes to sexually assault her). Along these lines, he assumes a woman is tired because she entertains too many men in her bed. It’s also revealed that Leroy harbors a fascination with Rhoda, and he believes his teasing is his way of showing love to her. Elsewhere, a few characters are said to be homosexuals based on either implications from a therapist or the person’s apparent disinterest in spending time with the opposite sex; but nothing is confirmed and no homosexual activity is ever depicted. Monica is obsessed with her therapy sessions and often drops random remarks about sex into conversations, though nothing ever becomes crass. Along these lines, she is convinced that the feelings she has for her brother are incestuous simply because her analyst thinks they might be, but we never see any such activity depicted or confirmed. Elsewhere, a woman makes non-graphic comments about how she dislikes the way virgin men are depicted in romance novels and discusses, in non-graphic terms, how she wished such men were portrayed. Some characters use the word whore and b-tch to refer to women of ill-repute or women they don’t like. Some men make comments and/or display behaviors towards women that could be (under a modern lens) construed as sexual harassment. Lastly, a little boy tells his mother he wants to marry her when he grows up (he never does, of course).