Synopsis: The Small Assassin, a short story by Ray Bradbury published in 1946, is a disturbing psychological horror story that explores fear and paranoia in motherhood. Alice Leiber, after a complicated delivery, develops an irrational rejection of her baby, convinced that there is something strange about him. Her husband, David, tries to help her, while Dr. Jeffers attributes her fear to an emotional disorder. However, as unexplained events occur, the sense of threat grows, and what seems like a simple obsession becomes terrifyingly real.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of The Small Assassin, by Ray Bradbury
In the story The Small Assassin, Alice Leiber wakes up on the delivery table with a terrifying certainty: someone has tried to kill her. Unable to pinpoint when this conviction took hold of her, she feels that something evil has attacked her, something that nobody else perceives. Her husband, David, is happy with the birth of their son, a child with blue eyes and a calm face, but Alice, on seeing him for the first time, feels a shiver of terror. She knows that her killer has been born.
As the days pass, Alice distances herself more and more from her baby. Doctor Jeffers warns David that his wife has developed a rejection of the child, possibly because of the trauma of the birth, but he is confident that she will overcome this feeling with time. However, Alice does not improve; on the contrary, her anguish increases. She confesses to her husband that she feels afraid, that the child is not like the others, and that he observes her in an unusual way. David, trying to reassure her, attributes everything to her exhaustion and stress.
The nights become increasingly disturbing. Alice hears small noises in the house that seem to come from the hallway, and she feels that the baby does not sleep like the others. She often finds him awake in the dark, staring at her. Her fear turns to despair when David has to travel for work and leaves her alone with the child. Without her husband to protect her, Alice reaches the brink of madness: one night, in an act of desperation, she tries to suffocate him by pressing a pillow over the baby’s face, convinced that it is the only way to save herself. However, terrified by what she has just done, she runs out of the room. When she returns a few minutes later, she expects to find him lifeless, but the baby is still there, awake and smiling as if nothing had happened. Horrified, she realizes that she cannot kill him. From then on, she stops taking care of the child completely. Meanwhile, her physical and emotional state deteriorates until she falls ill with pneumonia.
David returns from his trip upon receiving the news of his wife’s illness and, upon hearing her testimony, understands that Alice has lost her mind. In desperation, he consults Dr. Jeffers, who diagnoses a postpartum obsession and recommends patience and love to help her overcome her fear. It seems that Alice is recovering for a while, but the calm does not last. One night, she wakes up terrified and begs David to take her away, to let her escape before the baby finishes her off. A worried David promises her that they will see a psychiatrist, but the unthinkable happens before they can do so.
One afternoon, when he gets home, David finds Alice dead at the bottom of the stairs. She fell strangely as if she had tripped over something. A toy lies next to her: a large rag doll. The image chills his blood. He remembers that, a few days earlier, he had almost fallen in the same place after stepping on it. Then, a terrifying idea hits him: could his son have left the toy there intentionally? It’s an irrational thought, but it fits with everything Alice feared.
David sinks into despair. In a fit of fear and desperation, he begins to consider the possibility that Alice was right: the baby is not normal. His mind is filled with terrifying ideas about the instinctive resentment of newborns towards their mothers for having expelled them from the safety of the womb and the possibility that some children are born fully conscious and with an intelligence hidden behind their apparent defencelessness. Convinced that his son is a murderer, he decides to kill him.
Dr. Jeffers, seeing that David has lost his sanity, sedates him and lets him rest. The next day, when he returns to the house, he finds David dead in his room, asphyxiated by gas that had leaked from an open pipe. The scene does not look like a suicide, but there are no signs that anyone else was in the house.
Then Jeffers makes a disturbing discovery: the baby’s crib is empty. As he searches the house for the child, he begins to consider an idea that had previously seemed impossible. Finally, with a mixture of disbelief and horror, he takes a scalpel from his briefcase and advances through the house. As a shadow moves in the hallway, he murmurs, as if calling to a dangerous animal:
“See, baby! Something bright—something pretty!”
Characters from The Small Assassin, by Ray Bradbury
Alice Leiber is the protagonist of the story and the character who suffers most from the evolution of the conflict. Her perception of the world changes drastically from the moment her son is born. Before, she was a happily married woman, secure in her life and love for her husband. However, after giving birth, she develops a visceral aversion to her baby, convinced that he tried to kill her and that he is still plotting her death. Her fear grows until it becomes an asphyxiating paranoia that leads her to illness, exhaustion, and, finally, absolute despair. Her terror is not only based on the irrational but also on minor signs that seem to confirm that her son is no ordinary baby. Alice finds herself trapped in a nightmare where logic no longer works, where her husband does not believe her, and where her only way out seems to be to kill the child or flee. But before she can escape, she dies strangely, in circumstances that seem to confirm her suspicions. Her character is tragic not only because she suffers a violent death but also because, until the end, she remains alone in her fear, with no one to validate her anguish or help her face it.
David Leiber is Alice’s husband and represents rationality within the story and the denial of what is beyond his understanding. At first, David is a loving and understanding husband, but his patience wears thin as Alice becomes increasingly obsessed. Although he tries to help and shows compassion for her condition, he never really believes what she says. He clings to the medical and psychological explanations offered by Dr. Jeffers, convinced that it all boils down to a passing emotional disorder. However, after Alice’s death, he begins to have doubts. His transformation is gradual but devastating: from being a confident and protective man, he becomes paranoid, plunged into the same despair that consumed his wife. Her death in suspicious circumstances closes the circle of tragedy surrounding the family and leaves open the possibility that, in the end, he, too, understood the truth too late.
Dr. Jeffers is the voice of science and skepticism in the story. He plays the role of the medical authority, offering rational explanations for Alice’s behavior. For him, everything has a logical cause: Alice’s rejection of her son is a typical case of maternal ambivalence, an understandable psychological reaction following a traumatic birth. Throughout the story, Jeffers remains firm in his position, trying to reassure David and guide him in helping his wife. However, in the last scene, his attitude changes subtly when he is left alone at home with the missing baby. Although he doesn’t express it openly, he doubts it for the first time. His decision to take a scalpel and cautiously search for the child suggests that, deep down, something in the story has made him doubt. He is the only surviving character, but the ending suggests that he, too, has begun to see the impossible.
The baby is the most disturbing figure in the story. Although he never speaks or acts explicitly, his presence is the central axis of the horror. Everything that happens in the story revolves around the idea that this child is not like the others, that there is a dark and inhuman intelligence within him that drives him to get rid of his parents. What makes him terrifying is precisely his ambiguity: he is never seen doing anything abnormal, but Alice and David’s deaths seem connected to him. His eyes always open in the darkness, his crying that makes his mother sick, the apparent intention with which he leaves a toy on the stairs… All this suggests that she is not an innocent victim but a silent predator lurking from the cradle. In the last scene, her disappearance reinforces this idea: if she were just a normal baby, she would still be in her crib, helpless. But the fact that Jeffers goes out looking for her armed suggests that even he has begun to wonder if Alice was right all along.
Analysis of The Small Assassin, by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury’s The Small Assassin is a story that mixes psychological terror with a more disturbing form of horror: the fear of the unknown that manifests in everyday life. At first glance, the story seems to be about a mother with postpartum disorder who rejects her baby. But as it progresses, terrifying doubts arise: what if Alice is not crazy? What if the baby is a threat? Bradbury plays with uncertainty, leaving the possibility that the impossible is real.
One of the most important themes of the story is the fear of motherhood and parents’ vulnerability towards their children. Alice is a mother who does not feel love for her baby, which is already a taboo subject in itself. Society expects a mother to love her child unconditionally from the beginning, but Alice feels the opposite: terror, rejection, and the feeling that the child is a threat. Bradbury uses this idea to make the reader uncomfortable, as he turns a moment that should be beautiful into something dreadful. What if Alice is right? What if babies, at birth, are conscious and full of resentment towards their parents for having brought them into the world?
Another crucial aspect of the story is the figure of the “perfect killer.” Usually, when we think of a murderer, we imagine someone intense, violent, and with clear motivations. However, here, the alleged murderer is a defenseless baby. No one would suspect a newborn. This gives the story a psychological horror tone, as the danger does not come from a monster with fangs or claws but from something small and harmless in appearance. Alice is the only one who perceives it, but as no one believes her, she is trapped in a nightmare from which she cannot escape.
Ambiguity plays a key role in the story. At no point are we explicitly told that the baby is a murderer. However, the coincidences are disturbing: Alice almost dies in childbirth, then falls ill with pneumonia because the baby keeps her awake all night, and finally dies after falling down the stairs after tripping over a toy that seems to have been placed there on purpose. Later, David also dies in strange circumstances. Is it all a series of tragic accidents, or is the baby getting rid of those who perceive it as a danger? The story does not confirm this, but it leaves enough clues for the reader to draw conclusions.
Another interesting detail is David’s evolution. Initially, he is rational and tries to calm his wife with logical explanations. But something changes in him when Alice dies. He begins to notice things that he had ignored before and little by little; he falls into the same paranoia. In the end, he dies suspiciously, as if the baby had eliminated the last obstacle in his path. The story shows how madness (or the truth) is contagious: first Alice, then David, and finally Dr. Jeffers, who in the last scene seems to have doubts about the nature of the child.
The ending is open, but it leaves a sense of imminent danger. The baby has disappeared from its crib, and Dr. Jeffers, the last sane character in the story, finds himself alone in the house holding a scalpel. This suggests that, after all his skepticism, he is no longer sure what is happening. What will he do with the scalpel? Will he use it to defend himself? Or is he simply succumbing to the same paranoia that destroyed Alice and David? The last line, in which Jeffers tries to attract the baby with something “bright and beautiful,” keeps the reader in suspense.
