Intermittent Mechanism

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is regarded by many as the single greatest murder mystery of all time. And this is for good reason — it is an impressive feat to create a murder mystery with ten consecutive murders without the perpetrator becoming obvious, and without the story becoming boring or repetitive. It is especially impressive to also have these murders follow the events of the famous Frank Green poem. And to this end, Christe does a fantastic job. Each murder has a sense of uniqueness, and follows the poem quite closely, but not so closely that the upcoming murders are made obvious by the poem’s contents. From the first couple murders being simple poison, to the brutal murder of Mr. Rogers while chopping wood, to the epic scene of Vera snatching a revolver from Lombard, the novel keeps changing the methods and situations that guide these murders. The murders are also set up in a way where they become increasingly elaborate to combat the increasing precaution of the guests of Soldier Island. Overall, the situations set up by Christie are cohesive with the narrative and stay interesting through their developments.

What makes this story especially interesting to me isn’t just the complexity and cohesiveness of the murder mystery, but rather the human element of the story which Christie develops extremely well. Christie develops characters to have very distinctive personalities, and this distinctness is especially highlighted by the stress of the situation they are put in. Vera’s guilt and lack of self-confidence guides her passive approach to the unfolding events. She tends to follow the lead of others and as such misses opportunities to improve her situation. Brent’s self-righteousness stops her from collaborating with the rest of the people on the island, and this leads her to isolate from the rest of the group, and in a way this contributes to her eventual murder. These sorts of psychological flaws are brought to the forefront of each character through the events of the story, and present an ongoing drama of personalities which greatly complements the murder mystery unfolding.

An important thing to note in regards to character psychologies is how they strategize when the situation becomes dire. As per Wargrave’s command, they let everyone be a suspect, and this leads them to spend excessive amounts of time simply observing rather than taking any more drastic preventative action. Although character inaction would typically be a point of frustration while reading a novel, this wasn’t the case for me reading And Then There Were None. I felt like the characters not taking drastic action to improve their situation was in line with their personalities, and in line with their situation. These characters had such drastically different personalities and approaches to the situation at hand that it makes sense that they wouldn’t be able to reach consensus and try and execute a more complete plan to address the murderer. The situation was also developed in a way such that the characters genuinely were forced into inaction. They were left on an island with no way out, and since the murderer was amongst them yet unknown, many possible approaches to address the situation were ruled out. Because of these strategic decisions by Christie both in regards to the situation she manufactured and the characters she wrote, the reader was able to simply observe these murders unfold completely organically, without feeling dissatisfied by the characters’ choices.

The next major topic to discuss in regards to Christie’s development of the murder mystery is the actual mystery and its solution. Reading through the ten murders, there really was next to no clear indication of any one person being a murderer. While this is fantastic, there were also not many clues placed which led to the solution of the puzzle. Tracing the murder back to Wargrave required the reader to pick up on the symbol of Cain at Wargrave’s death, to recognize him as the only person not responsible for a murder prior to the events of the novel, or to pick up on the death of Armstrong being by virtue of  being swallowed by a red herring. These clues are minute and thus difficult to pick up on, and also are not sufficient evidence to link the murders to Wargrave. This combination essentially makes it impossible to determine the murderer without reading Wargrave’s confession. This is entirely intentional, since the murder mystery is supposed to be extremely difficult to the point of being unsolvable. However, the lack of relevant and damning clues for the reader make them less active as a participant in the novel. There is not much for the reader to solve, and so they mainly participate passively, simply watching the events unfold rather than being to predict or solve them in some capacity. Although unsatisfying, this decision by Christie to make the mystery impossible to follow makes sense. This is because she wants the reader of the novel to be put in the same situation as the characters trapped on Soldier Island. Being entirely powerless as the murders unfold, with no clues which could link back to the killer is the exact position which the characters are in, and so it makes sense that Christie would want the experience of the reader to mirror this. The character inaction we discussed previously exactly aligns with the reader’s inaction. 

On the note of solving the murder, I do think the letter from Wargrave in the bottle on the sea is a fantastic touch at the end of the novel. This letter, although only a few pages long, is an incredible dive into the mind of Wargrave, and paints him as a sort of deranged man with a twisted sense of justice. The things we learn about him align with what we had already known about him — specifically, his psychopathic righteousness aligns with his character as a Justice, and as the person who took charge of decision making on the island. His character views himself as an artist of justice, and this makes sense given the elaborate plans he devised, and given the letter he threw into the ocean — he couldn’t bear his effort and work being lost, and he had to confess somewhere. His character is definitely deranged, but is very interesting, and this letter does a great job of retroactively shaping the story which the reader has just finished. Overall, after reading, I understand the reputation of And Then There Were None as one of the greatest mystery novels of all time. The story told is incredibly complex and interesting, and the characters are very distinct and consistent. Watching the psychologies of the characters as they were left in a helpless situation was even more interesting than the murder mystery itself, and was definitely the highlight of the novel. I found it dissatisfying that the mystery was essentially impossible to solve for the reader, but I understand Christie’s motivation for this. The letter from Wargrave also makes for a unique final part of the novel, retroactively explaining the events of the play and defining Wargrave’s character as something deranged yet extremely fascinating.