And Then There Were None Essay Questions

And Then There Were None Literary Analysis Essay
Of all of the victims of soldier island, Ms. Vera Claythorne is affected by the guilt from her murder the most up until it leads her to hang herself. In the book And Then There Were None, a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, ten seemingly unrelated people from all walks of life are brought to the privately owned Soldier Island. The guests however, are not all as innocent as they seem, as they have all commit murderous crimes untouchable by the law. As the guests slowly die in cadence with an ominous nursery rhyme the survivors unsuccessfully scramble to find the killer until eventually there are none left standing. Vera Claythorne by far deals with the most guilt of the party and she handles her

Cyril drowned in a lake Vera maliciously gave him permission to swim in and she is clearly still very scarred from the incident. While it might seem that she is reacting harshly to being falsely accused in actuality she is reacting negatively to the guilt she feels when reminded of what she did. Eventually we are given some insight into her memories of Cyril's death when she thinks, “Cyril had disappeared long before [Vera] got near the rock. She had felt the current take her, sweeping her out to sea. She had let herself go with it-swimming quietly until the boat arrived at last…” (Christie 191). This doesn’t prove any outright murder as she denies her true motives but she also is slightly admitting to herself that there was no way she was going to save Cyril. Whether she concedes this because she feels guilty about not being there for him or if she is trying to calm her guilt by diluting her own responsibility is unclear, but either way there is more to the story than she lets on. Her discomfort is evidence of Vera very clearly struggling with the moral consequences of her