Bad Seed

The Bad Seed is a play based on the novel written by William March in the early 1950’s. It’s about a little girl who is portrayed as the perfect daughter, student, and neighbor. She’s supposedly good at everything, with very good manners and never did anything wrong to receive a spanking. Nobody saw through her fake personality except her own mother, who could tell something was not right about her. In the story we find out that this eight year old girl with the perfect braids is actually a murderer or a psychopath. Not only does she end up killing a classmate just for an award that she felt she deserved, but killed a few other people also. In the end her mother finds out about her ways and finally thinks up a plan to kill her daughter for the sake of society and to kill herself because she felt that it was her fault her daughter turned out like that through heredity of her crazy criminal-minded grandmother.

I like this play the most out of the last few that we read because it’s very suspenseful because the whole time I was reading it, I couldn’t believe that someone at that age would commit so many murders without even getting caught. I’m kind of mad however, that she got away with it and the only person who knew her true colors, was her mother who killed herself. I don’t think her mother should have killed herself because even though it might be heredity that made her daughter the way she is, she can’t help her genetics. I think if anything, she should have focused more on Rhoda. I kind of had mixed feelings about when Christine tried to kill her. Even though I feel that murder is wrong, especially to your own daughter, there was really no other way to help her. If she was taken somewhere like an asylum, she may have hurt other people, especially because she looks like a sweet little girl, she may have talked the staff and into letting her get away from things. The ending was ironic though because she still ended up living and will stay with her father that is still clueless about her true behavior and in the end Monica tells him that he should be thankful that he still has her.

It’s scary to think that a person’s pure evil can pass down from generation to generation….this means that they can’t help their actions. Like Rhoda, she only does it to get what she wants. She sees it as the first resort, like its nothing to end an innocent life. It was kind of disturbing to read that she had killed that young innocent boy that had won the medal because he had earned it.  I really wonder if there are other little kids that do this in real life. If there is, I can’t imagine how they would handle that.

It was interesting to know about what they believed in the 50’s about nature vs. nurture and that they would do whatever it takes to stop a woman from having kids if she carries some type of illness from her genes. Somehow I don’t think that’s very fair, she can’t help where she had come from, and she like others should be able to have babies and start a family. I think this is a very controversial topic because it can either benefit society or benefit a person’s dream of having kids. Overall this story is very mind-blowing indeed.