Everyone knows that suspense is a fundamental part of a storyline. It makes the reader keep on reading by filling them with anxious anticipation of what will happen next. In And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, the ten main characters go through a time of immense stress. After being invited to an island by a mysterious unknown millionaire, they realize that something is not quite right; their host hasn 't shown up. Each of them starts dying. One by one. In the manner predicted by an old nursery rhyme about ten little indian boys. Throughout the story, Agatha Christie focused on multiple craft moves; inner thinking, symbolism, and description. Using these craft moves helped to create a suspenseful and ominous mood.
The author uses inner thinking to make the story more suspenseful. One example of this is when Vera ponders hanging herself. On page 244, it
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Agatha Christie uses symbolism to set a mysterious mood. The main use of symbolism in the story was the little Indian china figures. One piece of evidence comes from page 177 when one of the main characters wonders, “Six of those little China figures... Only six- how many will there be by tonight?”. This shows how the china figures make the mood ominous. Because the poem from earlier in the story states that all of the little Indian boys died in the end, the main characters getting a feeling of impending doom from the gradual disappearance of each figure. The second piece of evidence gives an ominous mood is from when the first one disappeared at the beginning of the story after Anthony Marston died. On page 74 it reads, “He was staring at the China figures in the center of the table. He muttered to himself: ‘That 's a rum. I could have sworn there were ten of them.’ ” Although Mr. Rogers does not realize it at first, the reader starts to make inferences with the poem in mind. The disappearance starts to spark the idea that something is wrong and the whole story seems a little spookier, or more