Juxtaposition In And Then There Were None

In her 1939 novel And Then There Were None, Dame Agatha Christie writes, “I have devised for my own private amusement the most ingenious ways of carrying out a murder,” (Christie 178). The speaker in this case, Justice Wargrave, may just as well be Christie herself. The inventive author once said, “I enjoy thinking of a detective story, planning it, but when the time comes to write it, it is like going to work every day, like having a job” (“Agatha…” UXL). Christie set out to twist the form of the standard detective story when she published her first novel, A Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920 after her sister Madge expressed her belief that it is “practically impossible to write a detective story in which the reader could not guess who

This idea is congruent with concerns surrounding World War I, such as the justification of war and the role each person’s unique set of morals plays in conflict. Shortly after the visitors reach Soldier Island, the name itself reminiscent of war, a recording of a voice plays in the living room, accusing each of them of committing a murder. These accusations deeply disturb many of the visitors, but Justice Wargrave is unmoved by the accusations, due to the fact that he reveals himself as the murderer much later in the novel. Justice Wargrave commits the gruesome murders because he believes these people are not innocent and therefore deserve to die for their crimes. Wargrave describes himself in a letter in the epilogue as “a mass of contradictions,” chiefly citing his “lust to kill” juxtaposed with his view that no “innocent person or creature should suffer or die by any act of [his]” (Christie And Then 178). In her autobiography, Christie writes: “The detective story was the story of the chase; it was also very much a story with a moral; in fact it was the old Everyman Morality Tale, the hunting down of Evil and the triumph of Good. At that time, the time of the 1914 war, the doer of evil was not a hero […]” (Christie Autobiography 449). Wargrave’s comments as written by Christie in conjunction with her own words about herself imply that Christie held strong beliefs about right and wrong; however, “she never lectures you about it,” says author and critic Sophie Masson, “she lets you draw your own existential and metaphysical conclusion.” Masson goes on to say that “Christie's understated, minimalist approach to characterisation [...] gives readers an airy space in which to construct their own understandings” (Masson). In a time of turmoil such as the period after World War I, distinguishing between good and evil becomes difficult. People begin to