And Then There Were None

Is any murder justifiable? Even if the person did the most heinous crime? Throughout Agatha Christies novel “And Then There Were None”, She portrayed the concept of justice in Many ways during the novel, however, there were 3 main areas of the novel that stood out to me. those were: firstly the order of deaths ordered by Wargrave, Wargrave ending his own life and vera clay horns death.

Wargrave – Justice Wargrave was a retired judge who had a reputation within his peers as the “hanging judge” war graves characteristics portray him as someone who likes leadership roles and is intelligent. We can tell Wargrave is intelligent as he orchestrated the whole plan which consisted of getting all the guests together and trying to do everything under their noses. Wargrave believes that all the guests he invited to the island under the name of UN OWEN should be punished. this is because they have all committed crimes but never been punished by the law. Wargrave has no doubt that every one of the guests should be emotionally punished and tortured in some way for what they have done as there own concept of justice. The way that Wargrave killed his victims was a key aspect in the novel. Prior to arriving on the island, Wargrave had mastered a list of the victims in order of how evil their crimes were. he constructed the list from 1 being the least hateful crime to 9, the worst crime in his mind that was committed. Anthony Marston was the first to die as seen in Wargraves eyes he committed the least hateful and evil crime. Marston’s crime was that he ran over two kids at night. Wargrave still believed that he had to die but didn’t feel the need to put him through the emotional torture as say Vera Claythorn. Vera claythorn was the last to die as she committed the most hatred crime according to Wargrave. she purposefully let a little boy swim out to the rocks even though she knew that he wouldn’t be able to swim that far without drowning. This was all because she was in love with Cyril uncle and that was the only way she thought she would have him. Wargraves intelligent plan was that vera would have to suffer through all the 8 deaths before her justice would be served. This made vera go mentally and emotionally crazy, not knowing when her time would come. Another key part of wargraves plan was to kill all the guests according to a poem that was ganging up in each of their bedrooms. The poem was called “ten little soldier boys”. Wargrave wanted all his guests to die according to the poem until the end of the poem that states “and then there were none” The first line of the poem goes “Ten little soldier boys went out to dine, one choked his little self and then there were nine” Anthony Marston was the first victim as we know, who died from cyanide poisoning in his drink. And last line goes “one little soldier boy left all alone, he hangs himself and then there were none” vera felt so mentally strained and crazy that she thought she heard Hugo (her deranged lover) calling for her to come be with him so she went up to her bedroom to see everything set up for her to end her life.

the second aspect of the novel that portrayed the concept of justice that I found important was Wargrave ending his own life. this in itself was a form of justice. He had just murdered all the other guests as they were guilty of crimes that they were never accused of by the law. War-grave thought that as he would be dying soon from illness that he would bring justice to all the victims that were killed by the guests by killing them in a specific order. Wargrave also ended his life as then he would never be committed of those crimes because there was no evidence of him being the killer. This was also a concept of justice because him killing himself was his own punishment and all the other guests got their own justice.

the last form of justice was vera clay thorns death. the eyes of wargrave, she was found to have committed the most heinous crime which was purposefully killing Cyril (her lovers nephew) just to get Hugo who she was madly in love with and Cyril was in the way. Seen as war-grave thought her crime was the worst he put her through the most torture and made her go mentally insane. by the end of the novel, Vera had witnessed all 8 deaths and had no idea when her time was coming. When she was thought to be the last guest remaining she had realised that she made it and wasn’t going to die. Vera was so drained and crazy that she thought she heard things coming up from her bedroom. This was war-graves plan to lour her into her room in order for him to kill her. Once she got up to her room, she noticed a chair and a rope hanging from the celling. Vera firstly thought that it was a sign from Hugo telling her to come be with him but it was just war-grave messing with her head. Once she gad got up on to the chair and kicked it over, War-grave walked into the room, this is the point of the novel where everything came out and the killer was revealed, Wargrave knew that she could never live knowing what she knew so after making her suffer for that long, he kicked the chair out from under her eventing in her hanging herself.

in conclusion, the order of deaths, wargrave ending his own life and vera Claythones death were all known concepts of justice.