The Woman In Cabin Analysis

Splash! (☺ Onomatopoeia) After hearing this noise, Laura Blacklock (Lo) is absolutely convinced that it was a body hitting the cold, dark waves of the North Sea. She is sure that she is the witness of a murder aboard the opulent cruise ship, the Aurora Borealis, but the head of security on the ship, Johan Nilsson, has his doubts. In The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, Lo is on a mission to prove that there was a murder on the ship after she makes out a scream, hears a splash, and sees blood on the window. The head of security does not believe Lo because she had been drinking while taking antidepressants the night of the apparent murder, is struggling to get a good night of sleep, and was burgled before getting on the ship. Therefore, he presumes …show more content…
She shows her relentlessness in her career and in her search for the murderer. Less than three days after she is burgled, leaving her fraught with sleep exhaustion as well as panic and anxiety attacks, she still gets on the Aurora Borealis. Lo thinks, “There was no way I was letting this opportunity slip through my fingers,” (Ware 15). She is determined to get on that ship because she knows that if she impresses her boss on this trip, she could get a huge promotion and receive the opportunity to cover her boss’s maternity leave. This demonstrates that Lo is committed to her career and that she wants to make herself proud and wants to be self-gratified. Lo is also relentless in her search for the killer. Lo convinces Nilsson to take her to meet every staff member on the boat because she wants to see if the woman who was in cabin 10 was truly murdered and gone. This proves that she is willing to put aside the time she has to network and connect with others during the cruise to find the murderer. Lo also tries to talk to as many guests as she can about their whereabouts the night of the murder. Even though she is determined in her career, she is more determined in the murder investigation because she wonders if she, or others, are the next target. Along with being determined, Lo is cautious. She is cautious of the splash and Ben. Any other person may simply disregard a splash they hear late at night on a cruise ship, thinking that …show more content…
Certain pieces of evidence point toward him being involved and other pieces point toward a lack of involvement. Ben claims that he had been playing poker the night of the murder and that he had never left the game in the suite. If his alibi is accurate, then he definitely was not the killer. He is also very helpful to Lo in trying to sort out guests who could and could not have been the murderer. Ben told her whom the others were that he played poker with, and whom he saw walking about the ship when he turned in for the night. He may be telling the truth, but he could also just be trying to clear his name. Other pieces of evidence point to Ben being involved in the murder. He is the only person who goes into the spa basement, therefore making him one of the few people who could have written the message telling Lo to, “Stop Digging.” In addition, when Nilsson went to talk to Ben about Lo and her certainty of a murder without any tangible evidence, Ben spilled all the information about Lo’s burglary, sleeping issues, and the antidepressants she takes. Lo states, “He’d spilled every detail of my biography that he had at hand, and made me look like an unreliable, chemically imbalanced neurotic in the process,” (Ware 141). This makes it seem like Ben is trying to force Nilsson to think that Lo is just delusional and that nothing actually did happen to cover up the