Ten Little Soldier Boys…
After reading the initial four chapters and deciding what I was going to write on, I, like many amateur researchers, looked up And Then There Were None on Wikipedia. What I found was quite shocking and recontextualized a lot of the content of the novel. Originally, both the title of the book, the island, and the nursery rhyme contained within was referring to black people using the n-word, and varied between using that or “indian” depending on where it was published. Eventually, it was published using “soldier boy” as is present in my copy. As it notes on the publishing details page, “This title was previously published as Ten Little Indians” but makes no note of its older, original name. Even the Author’s Note appears to have edited out the original name of the novel, with an otherwise-identical quote from Christie’s autobiography appearing on wikipedia as well.
While upon first reading, Philip Lombard’s heavily Anti-Semitic introduction (Chapter 1, section III) may appear to be originating from a racist character (giving old writers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to racism is often a fool’s errand), with this contextualization that does not seem to be the case. We explored this briefly in class, but there is clearly something to be said about the usage of caricatures and stereotypes within investigative fiction – with rampant orientalism, racism, and the usage of phrenology. This leads me to a paradigm within these works that people are just a puzzle piece within the larger mystery that, just like say, a bloody dagger, have information to be extracted in order to progress the plot. Rather than a complex, illogical, multi-motivated being with free will, these characters have a very specific part to play and have no use outside of that. This outlook can be found in a variety of detective rules, such as the condemnation of romances (Rule 3, Van Dine). Being able to reduce someone’s existence to a prescribed innate pathology is incredibly convenient for the logicality of a murder mystery, and racism was the easiest way to do so – so much so that it became a trope of the “Chinaman” who is “over-equipped in the matter of brains, and under-equipped in the matter of morals”(Rule V, Knox). Notably the problem that Knox describes is not one of appalling racism, but rather that this invocation makes the character’s evil motivations all too clear. I’d be interested in exploring more in this regard, particularly as the field of psychology and criminology begin to pick up steam, and with the emergence of serial killers.
That’s A Lot!!!
As we’ve explored in class, much has been written on the challenge of a good murder mystery, with many a rule to be broken or followed. However, Christie in this novel has a different challenge – the presentation of ten characters all converging at one location. On the one hand, introducing ten characters introduces ripe territory for tough but fair misdirection or obfuscation (Rule 1 of 2:The Detective Story must play fair according to Haycraft) however that very same strength causes a challenge with the story’s composition in that creating and distinguishing those characters is difficult (Rule 2 of 2: It must be readable). There is consideration for this challenge, particularly the usage of section numberings. Chapter 1 is split into 8 sections, each of which introduces a different character. Their name is always given in the first sentence, which is useful for identification, however not every character is given one of these sections, and the characters are thrown together before we even meet everyone. On this note, a Dramatis Personae list would have been extremely useful.
For every way And Then There Were None innovated in this regard, I found that it struggled more with this tension. Certainly, a lot of this can be chalked up to cultural shifts since its writing. For instance, Vera Claythorne is implied by her introduction to be a sort of nanny, or potentially a teacher for young children, which blended in my mind with the domestic work that Ms. Rogers does as well. It seems as the time, however, that these were probably very distinct roles, whereas nowadays these roles are often fulfilled by the same individual. Most of the characters are briefly introduced to us through a strange third-person in-their-head narration, but we then need to remember them from their outwards appearance, which is something that is not given in their introduction because we are seeing the world through their lens. Due to the style of narration, there’s then a character description through the lens of a different character which complicates things even more and causes tracking issues for me. On top of that, Mr. Blore is quickly re-introduced as Mr. Davis, only to be discovered to be Mr. Blore. I have found this tracking to be pretty difficult, but expect it to become easier as I become more acquainted with the characters (and they continue to die off.) Overall, I am intrigued by the first four chapters of And Then There Were None, but that intrigue comes with a heavy amount of disappointment as well.
– Bruno Pasquinelli
Intermittent Mechanism 