And Then There Were None Analysis

Imagine having a troubling past and deciding to change your life for the better. Just when things are going well your past comes back to ruin everything. How will you finally get away from your past? Now switch gears and picture yourself drowning in so much guilt after your past had arrived in the present and it overwhelms you. You ignore the truth and convince yourself that you didn't do anything wrong to feel less guilty. How far will you go until the guilt eats you alive?Both scenarios are representative of the book And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie and the short story “Retrieved Reformation” by O. Henry. In And Then There Were None Agatha Christie talks about 10 guilty murders that are invited to an island by an anonymous person
The character Vera from And Then There Were None has guilt after killing a boy named Cyril but tries to drain out the increasing thought of him after her crime was exposed from a time of hiding; however, it is becoming more of a challenge for her. Vera thought about how ”Cyril wasn't really strong. A punny child no stamina. The kind of child, perhaps, who wouldn't live to grow up…” (88)’’ We see here that Vera continues to think about her past of Cyril and Hugo which causing her to try to deny that killing Cyril was bad to try to relieve her guilt so she could forget about the past but she isn't able to. When Vera thought,”The kind of child, perhaps who wouldn't live to grow up.” This shows that she is trying to believe that he wouldn't live to grow up anyways so by killing Cyril doesn’t make her a bad person.After a time of thinking about Cyril in her bed, Vera thought,"It's too far, Cyril."But, Miss Claythorne..." Vera got up. She went to the dressing-table and swallowed three aspirins. She thought: "I wish I had some proper sleeping stuff."(88) We see here that Vera can’t sleep because she is constantly thinking about Cyril and can’t sleep from it which is leading her to take sleeping pills to try to drain out the thought.When Vera says,”I wish I had
Henry uses Jimmy to shows that if you try to run away from your past it might still come back to ruin your life. Jimmy tried to become a new man and start a new life to get away from his life of safecracking but in the end he has to decide to become his old criminal self and be caught or not just like how Vera from And Then There Were None tried to run away from her past by trying to forget.When Jimmy became Ralph D Spencer and came to Elmore, “He had won the respect of the community, his shoe store was flourishing and he and Annabel were engaged to be married in two weeks.”(32) We see here that Jimmy has left his past by reforming into a new person and has accomplished good things as Ralph D Spencer, but we know that doesn’t last for long. When it says”He had won the respect of the community” it shows that he doesn't come off like a criminal and has officially left his past. When Agatha gets locked in the vault someone exclaims,“Can’t you do something, Ralph? Try, won’t you?” He looked at her with a strange soft smile on his lips and in his eyes.”(35) We see here that in this moment, that his bad past has popped back up after leaving it and now he must decide if he should expose his hidden past that he tried to run away from in order to save Agatha. When someone says,”Can’t you do something, Ralph?”We know that Ralph can do something since he knows how to crack safes so that shows that his past is coming back to ruin everything he has