The Academic Element of the Academic Mystery

Kreizler introduces the reader to another school of thought (academic) as he proposes his theory that people’s actions are motivated by events that took place during their childhood. To convince the reader of this argument, Carr creates characters like Stevie, Cyrus, and Mary Palmer, all who work for Kreizler now. They all had difficult childhoods which they acted out against later on, committing heinous crimes. They were vindicated as a result of Kreizler’s help and mental evaluation of them.

While on an outing with Mary, the narrator John attempts to discover why the beautiful seemingly sweet Mary would chain her father to the bed and set the house on fire. It was known she had a severe speech problem, hindering her from communicating, which frustrated her. After placing her in an asylum, Kreizler discovered that Mary wasn’t crazy but was sexually abused by her father and acted out as a result. Not being able to talk, or read and write since her parents didn’t teach her, thinking she wasn’t capable of such a thing, she set the house on fire killing him. Still John forced himself, as Kreizler encouraged (to the reader as well), to delve deeper and attempt to understand why she did this when it’s not uncommon to be abused and other victims don’t set fire to their abusers.

As a result, in a way Carr challenges thoughts and forces the reader to make distinctions sanity and insanity while examining the childhoods of the characters, especially that of the kids. Kreizler concludes the killer in this story is indeed sane and acted because he had “vengeance for the child he had been [and] protection for the tortured soul he had become.” He also found it imperative to get the female perspective on the case—Sara’s viewpoint. He wanted her to help “create…a woman (or series of women) who might have helped foster such rage” in the killer to make him act.

This is academic because it not only teaches the reader a new concept (well perhaps not that new since it may be obvious to some) while being enveloped in a mystery, but also because it allows the reader to better analyze things, especially people, and even his/her own life, perhaps learning something new about themselves.