Agatha Christie Biography

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born September 5, 1890, in Torquay, England.
In 1914, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying
Corps. They had a daughter, Rosalind, and divorced in 1928. By that time,
Christie had begun writing mystery stories, initially in response to a dare from her
sister. She published her first novel in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which
featured the debut of one of her most famous characters, the Belgian sleuth
Hercule Poirot. Christie would go on to become the world’s best-selling writer of
mystery novels.
By the time Christie began writing, the mystery novel was a well-established genre with
definite rules. Edgar Allan Poe had pioneered the mystery genre in his short story
“Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle carried on the
practice. The story is traditionally told from the perspective of a detective-protagonist
(or a friend of the detective, like Sherlock Holmes’s companion, Dr. Watson) as he or
she examines clues and pursues a killer. At the end of the novel, the detective unmasks
the murderer and sums up the case, explaining the crime and clearing up mysterious
events. As the story unfolds, the reader gets access to exactly the same information as
the detective, which makes the mystery novel a kind of game in which the reader has a
chance to solve the case for him- or herself.
Fairly early in her career, in 1926, Christie came under fire for writing an “unfair”
mystery novel. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the killer turns out to be the narrator,
and many readers and critics felt that this was too deceptive a plot twist. Christie was
unapologetic, however, and today The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is considered a
masterpiece of the genre.
In all, Christie produced eighty novels and short-story collections, most of them
featuring either Poirot or her other famous sleuth, the elderly spinster Miss Marple. She
also wrote four works of nonfiction and fourteen plays, including The Mousetrap, the
longest-running play in history. Eventually, Christie married an archaeologist named Sir
Max Mallowan, whose trips to the Middle East provided the setting for a number of her
novels. In 1971, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Christie the title of Dame Commander of
the British Empire. Christie died January 12, 1976, in Oxfordshire, England.
Characters
See a complete list of the characters in And Then There Were None and in-depth
analyses of Judge Wargrave, Vera Claythorne, Philip Lombard, and more.
 Character List
 Judge Wargrave
 Vera Claythorne
 Philip Lombard
 Dr. Edward George Armstrong
 William Henry Blore
 Emily Brent
 General John Gordon Macarthur

Literary Devices
Themes
Literary Devices Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Administration of Justice
Most murder mysteries examine justice—its violation, through the act of murder, and its
restoration, through the work of a detective who solves the crime and ensures that the
murderer pays for his or her deed. And Then There Were None examines justice, but it
bends the formula by making the victims of murder people who committed murder
themselves. Thus, the killings on Indian Island are arguably acts of justice. Judge
Wargrave does the work of detective and murderer by picking out those who are guilty
and punishing them.
Whether we accept the justice of the events on Indian Island depends on both whether
we accept Wargrave’s belief that all the murder victims deserve their deaths and
whether we accept that Wargrave has the moral authority to pronounce and carry out the
sentences. At least some of the murders are unjust if we do not consider all of
Wargrave’s victims murderers. Emily Brent, for example, did not actually kill her
servant, Beatrice Taylor. Thus, one could argue that she deserves a lesser punishment
for her sin.

Christie explores the line that divides those who act unjustly from those who seek to
restore justice. She suggests that unjust behavior does not necessarily make someone
bad and enforcing justice does not necessarily make someone good . Wargrave’s
victims, although they have violated the rules of moral behavior in the past, are, for the
most part, far more likable and decent human beings than Wargrave. Although
Wargrave serves justice in a technical sense, he is a cruel and unsympathetic man, and
likely insane.

The Effects of Guilt on One’s Conscience

By creating a story in which every character has committed a crime, Christie explores
different human responses to the burden of a guilty conscience. Beginning with the first
moments after the recorded voice reveals the guests’ crimes, each character takes a
different approach to dealing with his or her guilt.

The characters who publicly and self-righteously deny their crimes are tormented by
guilt in private. General Macarthur, for instance, brusquely dismisses the claim that he
killed his wife’s lover. By the following day, however, guilt so overwhelms him that he
resignedly waits to die. Dr. Armstrong is equally dismissive of the charges against him,
but he soon starts dreaming about the woman who died on his operating table.

On the other hand, the people who own up to their crimes are less likely to feel pangs of
guilt. Lombard willingly admits to leaving tribesmen to die in the African bush,
insisting that he did it to save his own life and would willingly do it again. Tony
Marston readily owns up to running down the two children, and he displays no sense of
having done anything wrong. Neither of the two men gives a moment’s private thought
to his crime.

While the ones who do not own up to their crimes feel the guiltiest, no such correlation
exists between levels of guilt and likelihood of survival. Conscience has no bearing on
who lives the longest, as is illustrated by the contrast between the last two characters left
alive, Lombard and Vera. Lombard feels no guilt, and the air of doom that enshrouds
the island doesn’t affect him. Vera, on the other hand, is so guilt-ridden that she ends
her life by succumbing to the seemingly inevitable conclusion of the “Ten Little
Indians” poem and the aura of almost supernatural vengeance that pervades the novel.

The Danger of Reliance on Class Distinctions

And Then There Were None takes place in 1930s Britain, a society stratified into strict
social classes. These distinctions play a subtle but important role in the novel. As the
situation on the island becomes more and more desperate, social hierarchies continue to
dictate behavior, and their persistence ultimately makes it harder for some characters to
survive. Rogers continues to perform his butler’s duties even after it becomes clear that
a murderer is on the loose, and even after the murderer has killed his wife. Because it is
expected of a man of his social class, Rogers washes up after people, remains
downstairs to clean up after the others have gone to bed, and rises early in the morning
to chop firewood. The separation from the group that his work necessitates makes it
easy for the murderer to kill him. Additionally, the class-bound mentality of Dr.
Armstrong proves disastrous for himself and others, as he refuses to believe that a
respectable professional man like Wargrave could be the killer.

Literary Devices
Motifs
Literary Devices Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop
and inform the text’s major themes.
The “Ten Little Indians” Poem
The “Ten Little Indians” rhyme guides the progression of the novel. The singsong,
childish verses tell the story of the deaths of ten Indian boys and end with the line that
gives the novel its title: “and then there were none.” A framed copy of the rhyme hangs
in every bedroom, and ten small Indian figures sit on the dining-room table. The
murders are carried out to match, as closely as possible, the lines in the poem, and after
each murder, one of the figures vanishes from the dining room. The overall effect is one
of almost supernatural inevitability; eventually, all the characters realize that the next
murder will match the next verse, yet they are unable to escape their fates. The poem
affects Vera Claythorne more powerfully than it affects anyone else. She becomes
obsessed with it, and when she eventually kills herself she is operating under the
suggestive power of the poem’s final verse.

Dreams and Hallucinations

Dreams and hallucinations recur throughout the novel, usually as a reflection of various
characters’ guilty consciences. Dr. Armstrong has a dream in which he operates on a
person whose face is first Emily Brent’s and then Tony Marston’s. This dream likely
grows out of Armstrong’s memories of accidentally killing a woman on the operating
table. Emily Brent seems to go into a trance while writing in her diary; she wakes from
it to find the words “The murderer’s name is Beatrice Taylor” scrawled across the page.
Beatrice Taylor is the name of Emily Brent’s former maid, who got pregnant and killed
herself after Emily Brent fired her. Brent’s unconscious scrawl demonstrates, if not her
guilty conscience, at least her preoccupation with the death of her servant. Vera
Claythorne often feels that Hugo Hamilton—her former lover, for whose sake she let a
little boy drown—watches her, and whenever she smells the sea, she remembers the day
the boy died, as if hallucinating.

Read about the similar role hallucinations play as a motif in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Animal Imagery
The narrator’s descriptions of characters in And Then There Were None repeatedly draw
on animalistic qualities. Justice Wargrave is often described as a turtle. The most
common physical descriptions of Philip Lombard are his wolfish smile and the way he
moves like a panther. William Blore’s movements are slow and padding, “like a beast at
bay.” Vera Claythorne draws into herself like a wounded bird. These animal
comparisons intensify the longer the characters are trapped on Soldier Island, showing
the corrosion of their humanity as their fear and suspicion rises.
When they begin to suspect anyone could be the murderer, the characters notice more
feral aspects of each other as well. The more they humanize each other, the more they
trust each other. Conversely, when they lose trust, they begin to see their fellow
houseguests as dangerous and unstable. Vera even points out near the end of the novel
that the house has deteriorated from polite society to a zoo.

Vera’s realization comes from referencing the nursery rhyme the murders follow, in
which “three little soldier boys [are] walking in the zoo.” The poem has multiple
references to animals as causes of death, and those animals turn out to be a human hand
each time. The impression of a zoo is further emphasized by the fact that the characters
are trapped together on the island, but they have the distinct impression of being
watched. The disembodied voice from the gramophone at the very beginning of the
novel introduces the idea that someone knows these people’s secrets, and that someone
waits to see how they will react. The figurines disappear after each murder, even though
no one can account for who takes them. The characters feel keenly that they are on
display, unable to escape, and left without all the elements of society that allow them to
maintain their humanity.

Literary Devices
Symbols
Literary Devices Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or
concepts.
The Storm
For most of the novel, a fierce storm cuts the island off from the outside world. This
storm works as a plot device, for it both prevents anyone from escaping the island and
allows the murderer free rein. At the same time, the violence of the weather symbolizes
the violent acts taking place on Indian Island. The storm first breaks when the men carry
the corpse of General Macarthur into the dining room, symbolizing the guests’ dawning
realization that a murderer is loose on the island.

The Mark on Judge Wargrave’s Forehead

When Wargrave fakes his own death and then kills himself at the end of the novel, he
leaves a red gunshot wound on his forehead—first a fake wound, then a real wound.
This wound, as he points out in his confession, mirrors the brand that God placed upon
the forehead of Cain, the first murderer in the Bible. It symbolizes Wargrave’s self-
admitted links to Cain: both are evil men and murderers.

Food
When the characters arrive on the island, they are treated to an excellent dinner. Soon,
however, they are reduced to eating cold tongue meat out of cans. At the end of the
novel, both Lombard and Vera refuse to eat at all, since eating would require returning
to the house and risking death. The shift from a fancy dinner to canned meat to no food
at all symbolizes the larger pattern of events on the island, as the trappings of
civilization gradually fall away and the characters are reduced to mere self-preservation.

Other Literary Devices

Literary Devices Other Literary Devices

Genre
And Then There Were None is a murder mystery novel.
Narrator
The narrator of the novel is an unnamed omniscient individual.
Point of View
The point of view is a key feature of And Then There Were None. In the novel the point
of view constantly shifts back and forth between each of the ten characters.
Tone
The narrator relates the story in a dark, foreboding, and sinister tone, and often reacts
dramatically (or melodramatically) to the events of the story.

Tense
And Then There Were None is told in the past tense.
Setting (Time & Place)
The novel is set in the 1930s and takes place on Indian Island, a fictional island off the
coast of Devonshire in Southeast England.

Protagonist
Although no clear protagonist exists, Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard are the most
fully developed characters, and they outlive almost everyone else. Another way to look
at And Then There Were None is that the anonymous killer is actually the protagonist,
since that character is driving the events in the narrative.
Major Conflict
An anonymous killer gathers a collection of strangers on Indian Island to murder them
as punishment for their past crimes.

Rising Action
The accusations made by the recorded voice turn the island getaway into a scene of
paranoia. The murders of Tony Marston, Mrs. Rogers, General Macarthur, Mr. Rogers,
and Emily Brent indicate that no one will be able to escape the “Ten Little Indians”
rhyme.

Climax
The apparent death of Judge Wargrave and the disappearance of Dr. Armstrong strip
away any sense of order.

Falling Action
The murders of Blore, Lombard, and Vera, combined with Wargrave’s confession,
restore some sense of order to the chaos of the story.

Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is another key feature of And Then There Were None, and examples of it
abound in the novel. These include Vera’s first sight of Indian Island, which she thinks
looks sinister, hints at the trouble to come; the old man’s warning to Blore on the train
that the day of judgment is approaching hints that Blore will soon die; the “Ten Little
Indians” poem lays out the pattern for the imminent murders; Vera’s fascination with
both the poem and the hook on her ceiling presage her eventual decision to hang herself.