The Bad Seed

by William March

she had none of the guilts and none of the anxieties of childhood; and of course she had no capacity of affection, either, being concerned only with herself.

seemed to her then that her child, as though sensing for the first time that some factor of body or spirit separated her from those around her, tried to conceal the difference by aping the values of others; but since there was nothing spontaneous in her heart to instruct her, she must, instead, consider, debate, experiment, and feel her way cautiously through the values and minds of her models.

Rhoda was interested in material things for their own sake, and the lies she told were the hard, objective lies of an adult whose purpose was to confound and mislead.

But Claude Daigle, as anyone could see, was the born victim of others—the one who, in a sense, went about the world to invite his own destruction.

was strange, Mrs. Penmark thought, how greatly Rhoda was admired by older people, when children her own age could not abide her.)

guilt, when you examined it dispassionately, could be seen to be only a painful form of pride.

calculated spontaneity;

They killed for two reasons only—for profit, since they all had an unconquerable desire for possessions, and for the elimination of danger when their safety was threatened.

None had any conception of human morality; none was able to understand loyalty, affection, gratitude, or love; they were all cold, pitiless, and entirely selfish.

the class victim, the preordained one who turns up over and over in the career of the mass murderer—the one who, through his natural trust and the innocence of his outlook, makes possible the murderer’s triumphs over such extended periods of time.

In the first place, good people are rarely suspicious. They cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct one, and let matters rest there.

the normal are inclined to visualize the multiple killer as one who’s as monstrous in appearance as he is in mind,

these monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters; they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself—just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rose...