Castro 1

Erick Castro

Professor H. Batty

English 102

December 12, 2017

Fearing the Unknown

(Revised)

For a long time, it was believed that the way someone was raised would determine their

behavior when they grew up. When it was eventually found out that it wasnt that simple, fear

struck the hearts of many and people would forever begin to have doubts that could never be

settled. In William Marchs book The Bad Seed, Rhoda, is portrayed to be the perfect child. She

is shown to be smart, sweet, and quite mature for her age. She has grown up in a rich

environment with loving and caring parents. Although Rhoda is the focus of the story, her

actions are not the only thing that can be perceived as scary. Rhoda is nothing more than a

representation of what people truly fear, and that is the fear that comes with uncertainty.

For a long time, it was believed that the way someone was raised was the only impact on

the overall behavior of the child. This seemed to make sense because children like to imitate

anything they see in their surroundings. If a parent was kind and caring, then it was expected that

the child would also grow up to be kind and caring; likewise, if the parent was angry and violent,

then the child would be expected to grow up to have a negative behavior too. In the 1920s, two

psychologists by the name of Watson and Rayner conducted an experiment in which they took a

nine-month-old child, Albert, and began to show him rabbits, monkeys, masks, a white rat, and
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burning newspapers and then observed his reactions. Albert didnt show any fear of the objects,

so Watson decided to expose him to a loud sound the next time. He would hit a metal pipe with a

hammer and then cause Albert to cry. Watson continued to do this every time Albert was shown

the rat until he eventually grew to fear it (Analyzing Little Albert). This experiment had shown

that even phobias could be taught, further enforcing the idea that the way a child is raised fully

affected the outcome of their behavior. If something as complex as a phobia could be taught to

someone, then there was little reason to suspect that there were other underlying variables that

may contribute and explain the nature of other individuals. This concept was questioned and

revisited many times and research on the topic was far from over.

Eventually people began to question the thought of nature versus nurture and whether the

environment in which kids grew up in was the only determinant factor in their behavior. The

concept that people could grow up in the same environment and turn out to be completely

different people was a confusing concept. It was difficult to explain that someone who was

brought up in a caring environment would grow up to be unempathetic, or that someone growing

up in harsh conditions could grow up to be a normal individual who is free of problems. When

the concept of inherited traits was revisited, many experiments began to take place. In the

Minnesota Twin Family Study, they studied twins and parents that were separated at birth. It was

believed that certain traits, such as religious beliefs and social attitudes, would not be affected by

inherited traits. To everyones surprise, genes had shown to play a role in these behaviors. There

was a case in which two twins who had the same names, same habits, drove the same car, and

went on vacations to the same beach (Nature Vs Nurture). Such cases provided evidence that

people could grow up unpredictably based on their genetics and this caused fear amongst

everyone. Because little is known about how nature and nurture play a role in the way than any
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individual will end up like, it creates an uncertainty that is very unsettling, especially when the

concept applies to everyone around you.

The Bad Seed is a book by William March that starts with Rhoda attending a school (a

private school) picnic, where a child goes missing. Christine, Rhodas mother, hears on the radio

about a child who is found dead in the lake where Rhodas picnic was taking place and fears the

worst. It is then later found out that Rhoda was not the child to meet her untimely end, and

instead it turns out that the person who did die was Claude. The novel goes on to show that

Rhoda was the alleged killer. When considering the perspective of the other characters, there is

no perceived motive for it being murder, so it is assumed that the child just drowned. It was

revealed in the novel that Claude had earned a medal that Rhoda had been trying to earn, and

when she failed to win it, she demanded to receive what was rightfully hers. Another such

murder that takes place is with one of her neighbors when she was growing up. Rhoda was

promised a necklace by her elderly neighbor in Baltimore when she died. Rhoda wanted the

necklace but could not wait for her neighbor to die of old age and instead pushed her down the

stairs and killed her. On two separate accounts Rhoda took it to the extreme and killed people to

attain her desires; she had no remorse over the murders she committed and instead only focused

on what benefitted her the most.

During the same time this book was published, the Nature versus Nurture was becoming

a controversial topic. Long gone were the thoughts of the parents having full responsibility for a

childs outcome and instead a new concept took its place; the concept that people could inherit

psychological disorders began to arise. The thought that kids could inherit traits of a sociopath or

psychopath from their parents or grandparents was a hard concept to grasp, but it made the most
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sense. If children could inherit other traits and behavioral patterns, then it would only make sense

that psychological disorders within the brain could also be inherited.

In The Bad Seed, Christine is shown to be an adopted daughter and that her actual mother

was a psychopathic murderer. She herself was almost killed off by her very own mother while

she was just a baby, but managed to survive and was taken in to another home and raised in a

rich and warm environment. If that had not happened, he might be alive today to comfort me as

he did when I was a child (March 30). Christine had thoughts of being adopted and would

also dream of her early life when she still lived with her mother, but otherwise she grew up to be

a loving and caring adult like the people who adopted her. It appeared that everything was all

well and that her upbringing was the only influence because of her adoptive parents. Although

Christine had grown up as expected, there was still the relationship to her mother that would

need to be kept track of.

Rhoda, Christines daughter, was unlike most children. She was portrayed as the perfect

little girl, yet she seemed a bit different. Rhoda was very mature for her age and didnt let things

bother her the way other children would. Her parents were puzzled and just grew to accept this as

how she was. When getting later into the story, it is revealed that Rhoda had inherited the bad

seed and was very much like her grandmother. She would rarely feel sort of empathy towards

others, including her parents; she seemed to only care about her own wellbeing. One thing that

seemed to drive Rhodas motivations was her desire to possess certain objects, leading to her

killing without any remorse so long as she got what she was after. She was raised in a loving and

caring environment, just like her mother, but ended up being a cold-blooded murderer like her

grandmother. This reflected the concept that people could inherit certain traits through their

genes, regardless of a childs environment during their younger years.

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William March uses his book to grab the attention of the public and push his ideas

forward. The Bad Seeds portrayal of Rhodas opaque, unknowable nature as symptomatic of

the 1950s confusion and anxiety over child-rearing practices, juvenile delinquency, and the

particular nature of child psychology. (Scahill). He built up Rhoda as this character with a very

complex personality. She lived what many would consider a very good and rich lifestyle, even

receiving various gifts from both her parents, as well as others who grew to like her. There was

little to no perceived reason for her crimes besides the connection she shared with her

psychopathic grandmother. He had built a strong case around the hereditary nature of Rhoda

because he strongly believed in the plausibility of genetic evil, especially in women and

children (Perin Gurel). This was a very controversial topic at the time and it made many people

fear the thought of a child being capable of such events in real life. There have been many cases

in which children have murdered other people, so it wasnt something completely unexpected,

but the reasoning behind it was never determined. Once more events like these began to turn up,

there was more interest and therefore more effort put into giving reason for such occurrences,

thus expanding the topic and giving people more reason to fear that these events are more likely

to happen than not.

Many things can scare a person, but sometimes it is the unexpected that is feared the

most. Lack of knowledge can make anything seem worse than it is, and in the case of a persons

behavior, it is frightening to think that there is not complete control over how they will become

based on how they are raised. The fact that anyone can be a murderer in disguise is a scary

concept, but it can and has happened. It is not necessarily the fact that Rhoda killed various

people that makes her monstrous, it is the appearance of being this cute little girl that listens to

her parents and behaves accordingly that makes her truly scary. She would stop at nothing to get
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what she desired and if anyone presented themselves as an obstacle to her, she would simply rid

herself of them by killing them too. In the story, Leroy continuously bothers Rhoda, telling her

that he knew of the crime she had committed and that he would make sure to put her in jail. He

didnt have any reason to believe that she killed Claude at this point in the story, but he teased

her simply because he didnt like her very much. Rhoda doesnt fall for his trap at first, but

eventually, after she rids herself of the shoes she wore when she killed Claude, Leroy takes it too

far and tells Rhoda he had the shoes and he would put her in the electric chair. Rhoda could not

accept this and decides to eventually murder him by locking him inside the basement and setting

it on fire. She killed him without any hesitation, with little reason besides keeping herself safe

and preventing her own demise.

When there is a person that is dangerous, it is easy to stay away from them, or at the very

least acknowledge that your life is in danger, but if they seem like a normal person, behave like a

normal person, and even behave like a normal person, then it becomes very difficult to tell apart

friend from foe. This uncertainty can be very unsettling and can provide people with more

anxiety than if they knew their lives were in danger. Although Rhoda is the main character and is

portrayed to be this scary figure, she herself is nothing more than a representation of the fears

that people have when it comes to uncertainty. The book does not only seek to give a villain

within the story, but also underline some of the most common behavioral patterns that exist

within every human being.

 Works Cited

Gurel, Perin. A Natural Little Girl: Reproduction and Naturalism in The Bad Seed as Novel,

Play, and Film. Academia.edu, Oxford University Press, 18 June 2010,

www.academia.edu/246260/A_Natural_Little_Girl_Reproduction_and_Naturalism_in_T

he_Bad_Seed_as_Novel_Play_and_Film.

March, William. The bad seed. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC,

2015. Print.

Martin, Anthony Joseph. Analyzing Little Albert. Sites at Penn State, 21 Oct. 2015,

sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/10/21/analyzing-little-albert/.

Robbins-cole, William Joseph. Nature Vs Nurture. Sites at Penn State, 21 Oct. 2016,

sites.psu.edu/siowfa16/2016/10/21/nature-vs-nurture-2/.

Scahill, Andrew David. Malice in Wonderland: The Perverse Pleasure of the Revolting Child.

Texas ScholarWorks, The University of Texas at Austin, May 2010,

repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/20118/SCAHILL1977--

DISSERTATION-2010.pdf?sequence=1.