Character Analysis: And Then There Were None By Agatha Christie

In the novel, And Then There Were None, written by Agatha Christie, ten people are invited to an island under false pretenses, but slowly, one by one, the group starts dying off. All of the deaths of the group are based upon an old nursery rhyme called Ten Little Indians, which is hung in all the rooms. But when all of them arrive at the house on the island, a record player starts playing, explaining how all of them are guilty of murder. Soon after, Mrs. Roger’s is the first to drop dead, leaving all of them weary and paranoid of one another. Doubts and blame start flying around between each other. After the record played, the reader learns some insight of one of the more important and developed characters, Vera Claythorne. Vera is a former
governess of Cyril Hamilton, a young, wealthy boy, who drowned under the care of the governess. This incident is one of the many dark secrets that are revealed to the others in the group. As the story continues to develop, you learn more about what actually happened to the young Hamilton. Claythorne let Hamilton swim into the ocean, which was not otherwise advised. She was led to believe that if Hamilton died, his relative, Hugo, would end up inheriting all of the money. She ended up letting Hamilton swim into the dangerous ocean with the hopes that with the young boy gone, Hugo would end up marrying her, leaving her wealthy also. When she let the young boy drown in the ocean, Hugo had his suspicions and chose to not have anything to do with her even though she was seen as innocent in the eyes of the law. Throughout the book, it is made clear that she does feel some emotions that portray as remorse and guilt because of the recurrent flashbacks of the event. In my point of view though, I don’t feel as if she feels that she did anything wrong. I think she more likely regrets that she did it because she ended loosing Hugo because of her actions. I have come to assume that Claythorne developed an obsession over Hugo, to the point where she would even kill to be with him. In my opinion, she is definitely not one of the most emotionally stable characters, which is probably why Judge Wargrave, the mastermind behind all of the murders, chose her. He knew that when it came down to the final two, she would unconsciously do what needed to be done to follow through with the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme so justice would be served. But when one of the themes of the book is justice, I don’t feel like Wargrave actually accomplished it. Although all ten of them are dead, Vera chose to die, almost like she was able to slip out of her punishment after murdering two people. In the end though, none her action fully surprised me.