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→Bullying
The ultimate irony is that Leroy has targeted someone who not only knows how to fight back, but who fights back for keeps. Tragically, his mind is incapable of the simple chain of adult logic that would inform him that, were she actually guilty of murder, she would not cower in fear of his accusations when they happened to strike close to home. To the contrary, she would kill him as easily as she killed Claude Daigle. Leroy, with his child mind, fails to process this logic. Result: murder.
The ultimate irony is that Leroy has targeted someone who not only knows how to fight back, but who fights back for keeps. Tragically, his mind is incapable of the simple chain of adult logic that would inform him that, were she actually guilty of murder, she would not cower in fear of his accusations when they happened to strike close to home. To the contrary, she would kill him as easily as she killed Claude Daigle. Leroy, with his child mind, fails to process this logic. Result: murder.
=== Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry ===
The practices of clinical [[psychology]] and [[psychiatry]] receive very harsh treatment in at least two respects. First, Monica Breedlove is a [[Literary type#Allegorical types|type]] of every "busy-bodied" adult who:
# Dabbles in psychiatry with no appreciation for the discipline's actual strengths and weaknesses, and
# As part of said dabbling, compromises the discipline of a child who is not her own.
Though Christine Penmark's failings as a child-rearer are evident and considerable, Monica Breedlove compounds the problem by lavishing presents on Rhoda and thinking to "make up" for Rhoda's disappointment. Leroy Jessup, though one can scarcely credit him as a judge of character, nevertheless describes Monica very aptly as a "know-it-all" who thinks that no one knows as much about human nature as does she.
More to the point, Monica's fascination with abnormal human behavior approaches the level of an unhealthy obsession. The richest irony is that Monica Breedlove, having subjected herself to [[psychoanalysis]], now believes herself qualified to judge the state of disturbance or adjustment in everyone to whom she is at all close. Her activities as an amateur psychiatrist become frankly dangerous when she obtains a supply of [[barbiturate]]s and gives them to Christine Penmark, who then uses them in an attempt to kill Rhoda to spare her the ignominy of a public trial and sentencing. But the other members of her "psychiatry club" are little better, obsessed as they appear to be with classic cases of serial murder and similar criminality, an obsession that appears to be an extreme example of the phenomenon of "rubbernecking" that one observes (usually to great annoyance) at the scene of any motor-vehicle accident.
But William March's criticisms of psychiatry are by no means limited to the attempt by amateurs to practice it. Professional psychiatrists like Reginald Tasker, and crime journalists like Richard Bravo, also have earned Mr. March's contempt. In March's view, even the professionals, steeped as they are in their pet theories of the origins of undesirable or antisocial behavior, are utterly at a loss to treat a real case of criminality that is quite literally under their noses.
=== Social class ===
The story draws a deliberate contrast among at least three social classes to which various characters belong:
# The affluent class, represented mainly by the Penmarks and, to a lesser extent, by Claudia Fern and her sisters.
# The middle class, represented by the Daigles.
# The lower class, represented by Leroy Jessop.
Class tension pervades the script on several levels. Rhoda Penmark gives no indication of ever having learned the maxim ''noblesse oblige'' (literally, "nobility obliges"), and Christine Penmark gives every indication of being utterly ineffectual in imparting any such lesson. Leroy Jessop is a [[Literary type#Allegorical types|type]] of the member of the lowest class, who notices that a member of the highest class is not behaving in a "noble" manner at all, and is determined to attack that person (not realizing that his target can strike back with lethal force). Hortense Daigle seeks to vindicate herself by blowing the lid off what she sees as scandalous behavior by certain persons, who have always looked down on her on account of her lack of station, who have either wronged her (like Rhoda, though she doesn't fully realize that until much later) or are trying to "cover up" to avoid embarrassment (like Claudia Fern).
== Alteration of the ending ==
== Alteration of the ending ==