When the cats are away the mice will play. When Mr. and Mrs. Adams go on vacation for a week, their two children are left behind with a babysitter. What could possibly go wrong? Those darling little angels would never do something terrible like torture the babysitter, now would they? Forgive me for begging the question and spoiling the entire plot before analyzing the main theme of the book. However, I do have to say that Mendal W. Johnson’s Let’s Go Play At the Adams’ has a bit more meaning than one might expect from a horror novel.
The plot is as thin as it can possibly be. Bobbby and Cindy Adams, 13 and 10 years old respectively, stay at home with their babysitter Barbara in their house in idyllic rural Maryland. Barbara is an attractive college student, a member of the swimming team, and ambitious to become a teacher. The two kids call their friends over to play. John is sixteen, slightly overweight and may or may not make the varsity football team depending on how things go. Dianne is eighteen, awkward, shy, and book smart but naive in the ways of the world. She coddles her young brother Paul who is thirteen and mentally ill. Dianne understands him much better than their parents do. Together they have a club called the Freedom Five that engages in adventure games like playing at war or cowboys and Indians; sometimes the games involve bondage and simulated torture. So when Bobby and Cindy are left under the care of Barbara for a week, the next step is obvious. They tie her to a bed and torture her to death. Then they pin the crime on a creepy Spanish-speaking migrant worker who lurks in the woods near the house. That’s it. That’s the whole story. But the plot isn’t the purpose of the book.
Mendal Johnson writes in the third person omniscient, meaning the novel is written so that the reader has access to the subjectivity of every character. This is significant because the thoughts and perceptions of the characters are key elements in the building of suspense. Barbara, the victim in this game, is given equal weight in relation to the others in terms of character building. As she lies awake all night, bound to a bed and gagged, she tries to understand why this is happening to her. The internal monologue turns into a dialogue when she imagines her college-friend Terry by her side, explaining the situation to her. Terry is, of course, a projection of Barbara’s imagination. It is through Terry that we learn how Barbara is wracked by insecurities and blames herself for the torture. Terry later becomes instrumental in the narrative at the end of the book when the explanation for the torture is revealed. Along the way, Barbara bears a strong resemblance to Joseph K., the main character in Franz Kafka’s The Trial in that she feels she is being punished for something she cannot comprehend and the more she tries to find out why, the more elusive the answers get.
The other characters in the Freedom Five reveal themselves through their perceptions of Barbara. Although they make decisions by voting democratically, Dianne is the brains of the operation, the one who steers them along their course towards the eventual demise of Barbara. For her this is a power trip in which she practices her ability to dominate and control others. For John, the imprisonment of Barbara is an opportunity for him to overcome his insecurity, primarily sexual, in approaching women. Bobby is the one who has the most sympathy for Barbara, but his desires for her are purely based around principles of domination; he fantasizes about her as being a trained domestic animal, one that will always come back to him if he sets her free. He wants Barbara to be like a dog who runs after a stick that has been thrown and then obediently brings it back to their owner. Paul is little more than a mentally disturbed sadist and psychopath, while Cindy is merely the little ten year old girl who tags along with her big brother. Each of them has a specific purpose for doing what they do.
I believe that an important clue to interpreting this book lies in the name “Freedom Five” that the kids choose to give their club. It is exactly the kind of unimaginative and unoriginal title that children would choose for a secret organization given their age-related limited knowledge of the world. It serves as a reminder of how young they are, but more importantly it indicates the author’s intention of examining the nature of freedom. The idea of freedom entails the concept of being free from something and in this case the kids are free from their parents. Not only are the parents excluded from the club, but they are absent from the house while away on vacation. Occupying the space between childhood amd adulthood, the only obstacle to the freedom of choice that adults have is the babysitter Barbara. Therefore, she has to be removed, incapacitated, dominated, and controlled. They also see the world of adults as being an unhappy place. Adults have freedom and with that comes responsibility. Even worse, their lives look dull doing little more than going to work and arguing with each other. The Freedom Five see this as a last chance to experience complete freedom without the accompanying negativity of maturity.
With Barbara tied up and gagged so she can not give them orders, they are free to do whatever they want like staying up all night watching TV or eating all the ice cream, maybe even drinking milkshakes for breakfast. But this freedom isn’t as exciting as they expect it to be. In fact it is downright boring and they do have responsibilities like taking care of themselves and making sure Barabara doesn’t die. Therefore, they have to up the ante by making plans to torture Barbara to death. Most of the narrative tension revolves around the kids suggesting plans and deciding what to do while the reader is suspended in uncertainty, wondering if these things will really happen or if they will be successful or not. Most of the book hovers between light BDSM pulp crime fiction and existential allegory without tipping too far in either direction.
It is at the end and in the epilogue that the meaning of the story is brought out in full. It is surprising to learn that the Freedom Five actually admire Barbara. Her friend Terry is envious of her too as she explains during the final soliloquy. In their minds, Barbara is charming, attractive, intelligent, and talented. Even worse, she embodies all these qualities without making any effort. This is a poignant irony considering the earlier chapter when Barbara thinks about how insecure and awkward she feels. But in the end, perceptions are stronger motivators than reality. Besides, the Freedom Five are children who aren’t psychologically developed enough to understand the complex points of view of others. But in any case, Barbara represents their Ideal Person while they all feel inferior in her presence. So instead of making an effort to build their own characters and achieve a higher state of being, they decide to degrade and destroy their idol. They don’t raise their sense of self-worth by making self-improvements; they do so by tearing down another human being who they perceive to be better than them. All too often, this is the way the world works.
Mendal Johnson could be criticized for making this novel too subtle. On one hand, he shows restraint (haha, no pun intended) when describing the torture to avoid making this into some kind of sick fantasy. On the other hand, he understates the philosophical theme to avoid boring the audience by turning this into a lecture on how terrible it is to hurt people. After getting to the end, I thought the two sides, the form and the meaning, were actually perfectly balanced as soon as he drove the main idea home in Terry’s monologue. I just think that the novel suffers a little bit from too much understatement. He could have turned up the volume on both the torture scenes and the theoretical theme without failing to realize the novel’s intentions provided he emphasizes both aspects in equal measures.
In conclusion, Let’s Go Play At the Adams’ is not so much of a disturbing book as it as a depressing one. The bondage and torture are not so extreme that they make your stomach churn. In fact, the violence barely registers as more than some PG-13 rated horror schlock you would see at a drive-in theater. The commentary on the psychology of power, the nature of freedom, and the sick-mindedness of human society is a little more potent. I do think Mendal W. Johnson is successful in making a statement about human nature. I also think it says something about the time it was written in. Just after the Summer of Love and Woodstock, youth culture and ideologies of freedom were big parts of the zeitgiest. Like Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, I think Let’s Go Plat At the Adams’ was partially intended to warn us about the dangers of letting young people have more freedom than they need. I have mixed feelings about that idea but I do think it something worthy of consideration.
If you just want to read something for cheap thrills or shock value, you won’t get much out of this book. But if your mind is subtle enough then the next time you wish for someone’s downfall. gloat over someone failure, laugh at someone stupidity, or think insulting thoughts about another person, even if you keep them to yourself, then remember the Freedom Five and ask yourself in honesty if there is something inside you that is just like those terrible kids who tortured Barbara.
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