A Comparison Of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None And Haircut

Gothic literature usually features many eerie elements, such as a dark setting and eventually the death of a character, usually murder. These elements can be seen in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, as well as Ring Lardner’s “Haircut.” Another thing the stories use are different styles of narration, making each of them more morbid. However, the point of view in these stories are also different. And Then There Were None is told in a third person omniscient, showing the characters thoughts without revealing the murderer until the very end. “Haircut,” however, is expressed entirely by a barber, not telling anything other than the story and his thoughts about it, which puts the story through a filter, so to speak. The deaths in Christie’s story are one after another, and no one death is completely focused on. In Lardner’s story, on the other hand, the entire story is told, which leads up to the “accidental” death of the town bully. …show more content…
And Then There Were None is told in third person omniscient. That way, the novel doesn’t have any bias, due to seeing only one of the characters thoughts; instead, the thoughts of all the characters are shown, revealing their opinions on one another. “Haircut,” on the other hand, is told by an oblivious barber in a smaller town. Due to this being the way the story is read, the events of the story are molded in a way by the barber’s bias, and personality. While the events were actually quite tragic, like when Jim and his group of bullies chased the woman, the narrator believes it was all just in “good fun,” and that “Jim certainly was a