In Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the reader is challenged to solve a murder mystery. When ten people are invited to an ominous island by strange means, they soon discover a deeper meaning to their vacation. The unknown host, Mr. Owen, has lured the ten guests to his secluded home in order to punish them for their crimes. All of Mr. Owen’s victims are guilty of murder, and the plan was to execute each one in order to ensure that justice is served. As the story progresses, it becomes a known fact among the group that there is no Mr. Owen: the killer was one of them. Each character becomes a suspect, the only thing exonerating them from suspicion being death. As each person dies, the guilt slowly begins to consume those who
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As the genre's undisputed queen of the maze, she laid her tantalizing plots so precisely and dropped her false leads so cunningly that few--if any --readers could guess the identity of the villain. The reader surrenders to an enigma in which the foul act of murder seems less a sin against man or god than a breach of etiquette" (Dame 110).
This quote says, once again, that Agatha Christie utilizes her writing conventions to the fullest of their abilities. The red herrings were perfectly put together, and the subtle clues could only be noticed after the reader was aware of who the killer was. Someone rereading the novel could detect the trail of breadcrumbs that Christie left, all leading to Wargrave; however, a first time reader would never realize the meaning of the small comments. The author of And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie, was very effective in her mission to keep the reader guessing until the very end. She made no character innocent, so that everyone was a suspect. There was also the mistrust and deception between the characters and themselves. Agatha Christie planned her novel out with the utmost precision, which is what made it into such a puzzling mystery. The reader was successfully deterred from discovering the identity of the killer before Agatha Christie had
As the genre's undisputed queen of the maze, she laid her tantalizing plots so precisely and dropped her false leads so cunningly that few--if any --readers could guess the identity of the villain. The reader surrenders to an enigma in which the foul act of murder seems less a sin against man or god than a breach of etiquette" (Dame 110).
This quote says, once again, that Agatha Christie utilizes her writing conventions to the fullest of their abilities. The red herrings were perfectly put together, and the subtle clues could only be noticed after the reader was aware of who the killer was. Someone rereading the novel could detect the trail of breadcrumbs that Christie left, all leading to Wargrave; however, a first time reader would never realize the meaning of the small comments. The author of And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie, was very effective in her mission to keep the reader guessing until the very end. She made no character innocent, so that everyone was a suspect. There was also the mistrust and deception between the characters and themselves. Agatha Christie planned her novel out with the utmost precision, which is what made it into such a puzzling mystery. The reader was successfully deterred from discovering the identity of the killer before Agatha Christie had