Character Overview
Rhoda Penmark is an eight-year-old girl who, in the course of the novel, murders a classmate and a groundskeeper who suspects her. It is also revealed that she murdered an elderly neighbor the year before. Despite coming from a loving home, she is a sociopath who is willing to kill to get what she wants. She is also a precociously talented con artist, adept at using a sweet, innocent façade to mask her true self from adults so they will give in to her. Her tricks do not work on other children, who sense who she truly is and avoid her.
March writes that Rhoda's evil is genetic; her maternal grandmother was a serial killer, who also began killing at a young age (Rhoda's mother, Christine, was adopted at a very young age and so doesn't remember her real parents).
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